Beneath the Stars
by William Easley
Summary: Ah, an outdoor camping trip with his sister and his favorite girl. What could go wrong for Dipper? It wasn't like he was going to be hit by a bolt out of the blue . . . was it? You probably know by now to look out for the unexpected. And for Wendip.
1. Chapter 1

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 1**

"OK, dudes, we'll set up here," Wendy said, tossing the bulky, rolled-up tent to the ground.

"We're barely out of sight of the Shack," Mabel complained. In fact, they had trekked to a site they visited almost every day: the bonfire clearing, they called it.

"Hey, hey, I don't wanna take you noobs into the wild places your first campin' trip," Wendy teased. "You OK there, Dipper?"

Dipper staggered along under the weight of a cooler and a backpack. "Doing OK," he puffed. "We won't have to lug this to those wild places, will we?"

"No way!" Wendy said with a laugh. "This is strictly backyard campin'. Hey, how'd Stan and Ford enjoy their party?"

"It was a million per cent success!" Mabel said. "We caught 'em by surprise, they had a great time, and then we went out on the lake to fish and Dipper and I did that thing you and I talked about. You know, the present that can't be put in a box?"

"I bet that went over big," Wendy said.

"Yeah, it did! Grunkle Stan couldn't stop crying, and Grunkle Ford couldn't stop smiling! And you know what? Tonight Grunkle Stan's taking Sheila out on a date!"

"Get out of town!" Wendy said, busy unrolling the tent and ground cloth.

"Yep," Mabel said. "They're driving all the way to Portland, and he's gonna take her to dinner at the City Grill."

Wendy whistled. "It must be true love! That's, like, a super expensive place with a great view of the city, and I hear it's real romantic! Ready for a Graunty, Mabes?"

"If it's Sheila, I'm OK for it!" Mabel said. "Oooh, I hope I get to be the maid of honor!"

Laughing, Wendy said, "I think you got a lock on that if it happens! Dip, put that thing down, dude! Tell you what, you get a fire started, OK? Scatter some of the old ashes first, 'cause we're gonna cook later."

Dipper set the blue-and-white cooler down with a thud. He also shrugged out of his backpack. "OK!" They always kept a supply of cut firewood and kindling in the clearing, and it didn't take him long to build a loose cone of dry pine twigs with thicker branches making vertical ribs. When that caught, he could pile on a couple of small hardwood logs. "Got matches?"

"Yeah, from lightin' the candles," Wendy said. She was unfolding one of two long, flexible, collapsible tent poles. "In my left jeans pocket."

Dipper turned pale. "Uh—you—you want me to stick my fingers in there?"

"Whoa!" Mabel yelled. "Go, Dipper!"

Dipper growled, "Shut up!"

"Just get the matches, man," Wendy said, and Dipper reached into her front jeans pocket. It was a tight squeeze. "Hey, love the way you wiggle those fingers! Just don't go too deep!" she cautioned playfully, making him jerk his hand back as if he'd thrust it into a fire. Wendy laughed. "I swear, dude, you have so many hang-ups! Wait just a sec." She fished in the pocket, then tossed a small matchbox to Dipper. "Just light the fire, man."

"OK." Dipper knelt by the stone fire circle, struck a match—succeeding only after two tries, because his hands were shaking a little—and soon the twigs began to crackle. He went over and helped Wendy and Mabel with the tent.

They were spreading out the ground cloth. "Why do we have to do this?" Mabel asked. "The tent has a floor in it!"

"Keeps everything dry in case of rain, and also keeps bugs out," Wendy told her. She glanced up at the clear blue sky. "'Course, we're not s'posed to have rain tonight, but this is how you put up a four-person tent, so you might as well learn the right way. Dip, hold down this side of the ground cloth. Mabel, help me spread the tent on top of it. We want the door facing the fire, OK? There you go. Square it up, now. Get the corners down. OK, Dip, you an' Mabel kick off your shoes. You never want to step on the tent with shoes on, right?"

"Sure," Dipper said, tugging off his sneakers without unlacing them.

Wendy shed her boots, too. "OK, now we're gonna put the two poles across the tent in an X shape, right? If you'll look there are hooks all along the tent that go around the poles. So let's do the one where Dipper's standin' first. Mabel, you get on the other corner, and you guys hook the tent onto the pole."

That wasn't very hard, and when they'd finished the other one and bent the long poles, the tent started to look like something a person might actually sleep in. They planted the ends of the poles in the soft earth, rolled the excess ground cloth under, and then pegged the corners of the tent down. "Pret-ty good, you two," Wendy said approvingly. "Now, if it really was rainy, we'd add the rain fly, but we'll be OK tonight without that. Let's check it out!"

They crept into the tent. The light inside was green—because the tent itself was green—and the smell was like that in a cloth store, mixed with a kind of waxy aroma. "Cool!" Mabel said, sitting on her knees. "There's plenty of room in here!"

"Yeah, but you're gonna think the ground is hard if you just sleep on it. You both got your sleeping bags an' air mattresses, right?"

"Yeah, in our packs," Dipper said.

"Just toss 'em in the tent for now," Wendy said, crawling out and grabbing her boots. She got her own pack and stowed it inside the tent. "We'll blow up the air mattresses before it gets real dark. Anyway, we got the battery lantern, so we're cool. Fire's goin' pretty good, so Dipper, get your shoes on and add a couple kinda small logs, OK? Not pine, though. Next we're gonna cook over a campfire."

"Marshmallows!" Mabel said, sounding like a little kid.

"Maybe for dessert," Wendy told her with a chuckle. She opened the cooler and took out three medium-sized potatoes and an onion. "OK, guys, couple things: First, tomorrow when we leave we're gonna take out all our garbage, right? We can dig a hole to bury anything that'll decompose, but anything else—cans, aluminum foil, whatev'—we pack up and haul back. First rule of bein' a good camper."

"Wait, wait," Mabel said. "What if—well, you know—I have to—bathroom stuff?"

"Welcome to your outdoor toilet," Wendy said, holding up a small folding shovel in one hand and a roll of toilet tissue in the other. "You dig the hole, do your business, an' cover it all back up, dude!"

"Outside?" Mabel asked in a squeak. "We could go back to the Shack!"

"No, not if this was a for-real wilderness campin' trip. Get used to it, girl! We're all gonna do it," Wendy said with a grin. "Right, Dip?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, right, right." _I can probably hold it, I can probably hold it, I can probably—_

Wendy put the tissue and shovel away. "Where was I? Oh, yeah, the second thing: We need to collect a few rocks, 'bout six inches thick. I gotta put the grill over the fire eventually. First, though, potatoes au outdoors!"

She nested each potato in a sheet of aluminum foil, sliced each one into half-inch circles, and then cut the onion the same way, but much thinner. She tucked a slice of onion between every two slices of potato, drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper, and then wrapped all three vegetables up. "We're gonna fire-roast these," she said. "Come on, I'll show you."

By then the campfire was burning well, three hickory fire logs on a big mound of red-hot embers. Using the shovel, Wendy carefully made a space in the embers, put one of the wrapped potatoes down, and then covered it over with the hot ashes. "Now you guys do the same thing. Don't get burned!"

Mabel and Dipper followed her directions and buried their potatoes. "'Kay, good goin'. Now, these will take forty-five minutes to get done. Dipper, keep time!"

"Got it," Dipper said, setting the timer function on his phone.

"Go get me some rocks!" Wendy said. "They don't have to be real big, but you maybe better bring 'em one at a time, 'cause they gotta be like six inches thick, and they'll be heavy!"

A small stream meandered through the woods not too far away from the campfire, and Mabel and Dipper went to it and found a jumble of rounded river stones. The best-looking ones were turtle-shaped and about ten inches across—and heavy, as Wendy had warned. Dipper managed to carry two, and Mabel, not wanting to be outdone, struggled along lugging three. Halfway back, though, she set two of them down. "I'll come back for you guys later!"

When they returned to the campsite, they saw that Wendy had added more small sticks to the fire and had raked it down level. "Yeah," she said. "These oughta do. Looks like we need three more 'bout this size."

"On our way!" Dipper said.

They returned with the last three rocks, and Wendy arranged them on either side of the fire and then laid a metal grill over them. "This is, like, our stove, see? I'm gonna grill up some burgers, and we'll have them with the potatoes. But we got like another fifteen minutes before I can start that, so relax for now."

"Um—where's that shovel?" Dipper asked.

"Right over there," Wendy said, pointing. "Dude, word of warning—if you go in the bushes, take a good look at the leaves! If they're like a kind of deep green and kinda shiny, and they grow in clusters of three, that's poison oak. Don't go there, and I mean that literally! Man, I once squatted in—"

"Too much information!" Dipper yelped, grabbing the shovel.

"Wait, wait, you're gonna need the toilet paper too!"

"No, I don't!"

Wendy laughed. "Then you don't need the shovel either, dummy! Just go behind some trees and pee already."

Dipper felt like his face was on fire as he left the clearing, hearing both Wendy and Mabel giggling behind him. But he found a convenient thicket of saplings and got the job done.

When he got back, Mabel was grinning evilly. "Wanna sing some campfire songs?" she asked. "How about 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat Gently Down the Stream? Get it, Dipper? _Stream_?"

"Very funny," Dipper said, sitting on the log and feeling the warmth of the fire. The sun was going down, the western sky turning a peach color. A cooling breeze had sprung up, but the sky overhead remained clear.

"Nice," Wendy said, sitting beside him and leaning back. "Little wind'll keep the skeeters away."

"They're not usually bad around here anyway," Dipper said.

"Hey, Dipper!" Mabel said. "We could sing 'By a Waterfall!' Or 'Please Don't Pee in the Pool!'"

"Ease off, Mabes," Wendy said. "Dip knows that everybody pees. Hey, you remember what I said about poison oak, too. Unless you want an itchy butt so red it'll attract baboons!"

Dipper laughed at that, and even Mabel joined in. From time to time Wendy raked more live coals over the potatoes—she had marked the spot where she'd buried each one with a small stone, because "Ashes get caught in the wrinkles of the foil and it's hard to find 'em sometimes"—and when Dipper's phone chimed, she said, "Burger time!"

They had already made the burger patties, mixing in some grated Parmesan cheese and seasoning, so she took them from the cooler and plumped them down on the grill. They started sizzling at once. "Won't be long now."

"Man," Mabel said, "they smell so good!"

"Yeah, for some reason, nothin' tastes as good as burgers cooked over real wood outdoors," Wendy said. "Mabes, get us three Pitt's from the cooler, OK? And find me the buns."

The burgers turned out perfect, slightly charred outside, done all the way through, and juicy. They put them on buns with pickles, onions, and mustard (except Mabel had brought a couple of squeeze packets of strawberry jam and used that, too). Wendy dug out the potatoes, gingerly unwrapped them, and said, "Feast's on, dudes!"

Dipper dug in. "This is really good!" he said.

"Told'ja, dude! Mabel, how's yours?"

Mabel's response was basically "Nom-nom-nom-nom!"

"She means it's good," Dipper said. "I can tell."

Then they made sloppy S'mores, munched them and licked their fingers, and everybody felt full. They finished and cleaned up, storing the empty soda cans, crumpled foil, and other waste in a thick plastic garbage bag, the forks and utensils in a gallon-sized zip-up one. "Wash these when we get back," Wendy said "Ordinarily we'd camp near water and heat some up to get stuff clean, but since it's just the one night this'll do."

Mabel kept burping contentedly. "Guys, this is so-o-o nice," she said.

Deep twilight had fallen, but at that time of year it would linger until nearly ten p.m. They took their sleeping bags and unrolled them in the grassy clearing a little way from the bonfire glade and lay back, looking up at the sky.

"Dipper should've brought his guitar," Mabel said.

"Dude, how's that goin'?" Wendy asked.

"He practices every single night," Mabel said. "Even down in my room I can hear him. He's pretty good on some songs, too. Hey, didja know he writes songs? He even wrote one—"

Hastily, Dipper said, "Mabel! When I'm good enough, I'll play, OK? I got a long way to go yet."

"Sorry," Mabel said.

"It's OK. It's just—when I'm in front of people, I get self-conscious and I, you know, mess up a lot," Dipper muttered.

"You'll get there, dude. Hey, look. Stars're comin' out," Wendy said. "There's the Big Dipper." She pointed to the western sky.

"Yeah, tonight you can see Mars and Saturn, too," Dipper told them. "Can't make out Mars yet, but there's Saturn, that yellowy-looking star right over there."

"Where's the moon?" Mabel asked.

"Won't be up until nearly midnight," Dipper told her. "We had a full moon a couple of days ago."

"Yeah . . . ." She sounded upset.

Dipper could have kicked himself. _Dang it, she's thinking of the night Russ—_

"'Round here they call that the Strawberry Moon," Wendy said.

"That's actually an old Algonquin name for it," Dipper murmured. "'Cause it was the time when strawberries began to get ripe in their territory."

"Huh," Wendy said. "'Round here they say it brings in a time of new life and new loves."

"That would be awfully nice," Mabel murmured.

They talked about this and that while the sky overhead darkened. Then around ten-thirty—Mabel was already starting to snore a little—Wendy said, "Well-p, let's haul back to the tent. 'Bout time to turn in. Mabel! Come on, girl!"

They walked back to where the tent was outlined by the ruddy glow of the dying fire. Wendy cheerfully asked, "Think you dudes can handle real campin'?"

"Sure we can," Mabel said. "We're Pines! Or is that Pineses? I never can remember. Uh, Wendy, where's the shovel and the, you know, tissue paper?"

"Gonna need the lantern, too," Wendy said. "I'll go with you."

"Girls always go to the bathroom in pairs," Dipper said.

"Duh!" Mabel told him. "'Cause we wanna talk about guys!"

Dipper sat on the log near the fire and started to inflate the air mattresses as the two girls made their way into the forest. "Watch your butt, Mabel!" he called after them.

"Watch your butt face, Dip!" she yelled back.

He rested between inflations—the mattresses took a lot of blowing up, and it made him a little dizzy. He'd just finished the last one when the world lit up green.

He jumped up and ran from under the tree cover, looking upward. "A meteor!" he yelled.

He heard crashing in the brush behind him. "What's that weird light?" Wendy shouted, emerging beside him.

"Look!"

The streaking meteor had come in from high up in the west and was steeply arcing downward. It shone an unearthly green, and Mabel just had time to come running out and gasp, "Wow-wow-wowee!" before it plunged out of sight.

"That was a big one!" Dipper said.

"Did it hit?" Wendy asked.

"Probably hundreds of miles away," Dipper told her. "You can't really judge—"

A rumble like thunder interrupted him.

"Huh," he said. "Guess I was wrong!"

 _-To Be Continued_


	2. Chapter 2

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 2**

Nothing else really happened—no flames on the horizon, no sirens or alarms or even the sounds of frightened animals. They talked about the meteorite for a few minutes, but of course (as Stanford might have put it) they had no real data upon which to base a conclusion. So around eleven p.m. Wendy and Mabel went inside the tent and got into their pajamas.

While they did, Dipper took out his phone and texted himself—because he wanted to be accurate the next day. Then Mabel called him in, and he saw that both of them had bedded down in their sleeping bags and were propped on their elbows, grinning at him. "Get ready for bed," Wendy said in what he thought was a seductive kind of voice.

"I'm not gonna change clothes with you two staring at me!" Dipper protested.

"Oh, come on," Mabel said. "Brobro, you and I used to take baths together."

"Yeah, when we were babies!"

"And last summer I was in your body for a while," Wendy reminded him. "So I don't think I'll be scared at anything I might glimpse. Or we could turn off the lantern."

"Yeah, and turn it on again when I'm undressed," Dipper said suspiciously.

"Well, we're barefoot," Wendy said. "It wouldn't be very gentlemanly to ask us to go outside."

"But if _you_ don't want to change in the tent, the outdoors is wide open. Be our guest," Mabel said.

Muttering unhappily, Dipper went outside into the dark to change into his Big Dipper pajamas—the only ones he owned. Then he carried his clothes and the lantern back inside. Both girls giggled at the sight of him. "Time to buy some new ones, Broseph," Mabel said. "Those are way too short in the sleeves and legs now!"

"Don't give him a hard time." Wendy patted the spot between her and Mabel's sleeping bag. "Saved room for you right here, dude."

Dipper couldn't stay angry. "Thanks," he said. He laid out his sleeping bag—a "mummy" design—on top of one of the air mattresses and then lay down, slipped inside it, and zipped it up. "Ready for me to turn off the light?"

"Yeah," Wendy said.

Dipper switched off the lantern. Then he felt Wendy's arm. He rolled over with difficulty and gave her a goodnight kiss.

Mabel said, "Hey! Knock off the smoochin', you two! Dipper will never get to sleep if you do that!"

"Okay," Dipper said, settling back and grinning in the dark.

"What're you eating?" Mabel asked suspiciously.

"Just a hard candy," he told her. "Peppermint."

He fell asleep with his arm outside the sleeping bag, holding hands with Wendy. And woke the next morning the same way, feeling good.

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Sunday, June 15—I'm actually writing this on Monday morning about 9:30, but I'm copying from notes I made last night on my phone. At approximately 10:45 p.m. Wendy, Mabel, and I witnessed a bright meteor that apparently plunged to earth not far from Gravity Falls._

 _When I first saw it, it was already bright—it grew brighter—and I'd estimate when I spotted it, it was about sixty-five degrees above the western horizon._

 _It rapidly became a brilliant greenish-white color—it lit up everything brighter than the full moon would do. I noticed that the light was strong enough to cast dark shadows. I first noticed it because of the generalized glow and as I just wrote, then saw it coming in from high in the western sky._

 _It traveled a little south of east, growing larger as it did, so I think it was moving deeper into the atmosphere the whole time. When it seemed closest, the head looked a little larger than an apple seed held at arm's length, but by that time the incandescence was so strong I could hardly stand to look directly at it. It spread a long, luminous green trail of glowing gaseous material behind it that faded gradually over several minutes. We didn't hear anything during its passage. As near as I could tell, it moved in a straight course, not a parabola or even an arc._

 _I'd estimate it was in sight for at least ten seconds. When you're under stress, though, time seems to move slower and I may be off in that guess. Anyway, Wendy and Mabel had enough time to run out from under the trees and catch sight of it. It vanished behind the tree line and a few seconds later (I'm guessing about fifteen, which would make it three miles away when it hit), we felt and heard a rumbling kind of shock wave. Then everything was quiet. It didn't look like anything had caught fire, so I assume the meteorite hit somewhere beyond the valley._

 _We waited around a while, but nothing more happened. The absence of sirens and even of alarmed animal sounds at last persuaded me that it probably hit farther away than I'd first thought. Maybe it broke the sound barrier, and the sonic boom was the "thunder" we heard._

 _OK, now this is Monday: Just after we had breakfast in the Shack, I heard a story on TV about the meteorite and they say the scientists can't pinpoint where it might have landed, but it probably was in Oregon. That doesn't narrow it down very much! And I have just done some Internet research._

 _In late 1948 and into 1949 in the American Southwest, observers saw a large number of "green fireballs," which looked like meteors but seemed to move more slowly in flat trajectories and sometimes even seemed to rise instead of descend. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz from the University of New Mexico studied them and actually saw one himself. He theorized that the fireballs weren't ordinary meteors but were "an artificial phenomenon."_

 _Only there were no spacecraft—at least none built by humans—until the late 1950s. Other researchers called the fireballs "bolides," which just means an extremely bright meteor that explodes in the atmosphere. Possibly we heard the sound of the meteor's explosion?_

 _Mabel's all for going on a mystery hunt to locate the crater, but that would take us all summer without any way of narrowing down the location of the impact site._

 _According to the Internet reading I did, Dr. LaPaz was half convinced that the green fireballs were the result of some foreign country's experimenting with weapons that had an ionizing effect on the atmosphere over the Southwest._

 _Others argue that they were UFOs, in the sense of alien spacecraft. They certainly were UFOs in the literal meaning—unidentified objects apparently flying through the air! Still others call them ball lightning or hallucinations or hoaxes._

 _However, Wendy, Mabel, and I all saw the thing and we've talked about it and agree that it looked like something solid. I can't think of any way of hoaxing something like the thing we saw. And we all three wouldn't have the same hallucination!_

 _So—what did we see? We need some help on this one, so I'm going to ride my bike over to have a talk with Grunkle Ford about this. I know he'll be interested in the problem, because it's a mystery!_

 _#_

Mayellen McGucket answered the doorbell and welcomed Dipper into the house. She still had an odd, detached, sort of vague quality—but she was a hundred times better than she had been the previous summer, when Dipper and his relatives and friends had rescued her from a weird beast of prey that had been feeding on her emotions. Now as an older couple, she and Fiddleford apparently had the happy marriage that had eluded them when they were younger.

"Fiddleford's tinkering, as usual," she said with a smile. "Working on another gadget for the government, I think. Your Uncle Stanley came in very late last night, but I think Stanford is in the library. Do you know where that is?"

"Yes, thank you," Dipper said. A walking chair had come up to stand beside her, and even if he hadn't known exactly where the library was, he wouldn't have asked for guidance, because the animated, talking chair would have escorted him, and he still felt creeped out by the robotic piece of furniture that Fiddleford had built to destroy unwanted intruders.

Dipper went to the long first-floor hall in the east wing and took the first door on the left into the book-lined sanctuary where Dr. Stanford Pines sat at a table, not reading, but stooped over a table, writing in one of his Journals. When the Northwests had owned the mansion, Preston Northwest had stocked the library with books he bought by the yard, for their bindings and not their contents—they were just for decoration.

In contrast, Fiddleford McGucket had filled the shelves with books he and Mayellen actually liked and read, and sometimes reread many times. The older Pines Twins now lived in the same wing where the library was located, and both Stanley and Stanford had added many volumes to the shelves: _A Discourse on Einsteinian Principles_ stood between _Making Money the Easy Way_ and _Secrets of the Savvy Gambler._ An antique _Complete Works of Shakespeare_ was next to _Scam! Great Con Artists Through History._ Dipper loved this room, which smelled of old books and gleamed with polished dark wood tables and chairs.

"Hi, great-uncle Ford," he said from the doorway.

Stanford turned and smiled. "Dipper! This is early."

"Uh—actually, it's close to eleven."

"Oh, so it is. Time flies when I'm transcribing my notes! How is Mabel?"

"I think she'll get over Russ in time," Dipper said. "Last night we camped out with Wendy, and sometime real late I heard Mabel talking in her sleep. She kept saying 'Don't do it, Russ!' I knew she was dreaming about him, but she didn't seem to wake up."

Stanford sighed. "The Foxen are a strange breed, with one foot in the human world and one in the animal kingdom. But Russ had human ancestry, and that made a difference. Of course, we know that Mabel is very susceptible to any boy who's both exotic and admirable."

"Yeah," Dipper said. "Did, uh, his grandmother turn into a fox or something?"

Ford smiled and said, "Sit down, Dipper." After the boy had pulled out a chair next to him, Ford leaned back and said, "It isn't exactly like lycanthropy, Dipper—you know the word?"

"Werewolfery," Dipper responded. "Yes, of course."

"Yes, well, the Foxen don't turn into humans or, vice-versa, into foxes because of an external compulsion, like the full moon. It's something they can will themselves to do, at any time. And unlike the werewolves of legend, in animal form they retain their human minds—or at least they know who they are in human form, and act accordingly. Their condition isn't a curse. I seriously doubt that Russ's grandmother physically turned into a fox, as you say. It's more likely that her mate, Russ's grandfather, gave up his fox form for most of the time to be with the mate he loved. However, I suppose the Foxen gene is a dominant one—their children and grandchildren wouldn't be human, but Foxen."

"Oh," Dipper said. "Thanks. Uh—actually, I came to ask you about something else. We saw a meteor last night."

Stanford opened his eyes wide. "You, too? So did Stanley! He and Sheila were driving back from Portland when it lit up the whole world, they said. Did you see the security camera footage on TV?"

"No. Shandra Jiminez did a report, but there weren't any graphics," Dipper told him.

"One of the Portland stations ran the video. It was so brilliant that it 'bloomed,' as they say in video terms—I mean, the light was so intense that you couldn't see any detail. They say it probably came to earth somewhere within the state."

"We heard a rumble that might have been the impact," Dipper said. "Or if it was a bolide, it might have been the explosion. I think if it hit, it struck somewhere about three to five miles from the Shack."

"Within the valley?"

"Yes, it would have to be, from the direction it was heading."

"But how do you know the distance?"

"Counting seconds," Dipper said. "You know, like telling how far away lightning is. You see the flash and start counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, so each number takes one second to say. Five Mississippis equals one mile. It couldn't have taken more than twenty seconds from the moment the meteor vanished until the shock wave hit us, and probably not less than fifteen."

"Interesting," Stanford said. "Hm. Perhaps we should make an effort to discover the crater."

"Mabel wants to do that, too!" Dipper said. "And I want to go along. It would be great to deal with a mystery that's not gonna involve us with ghosts and monsters for a change."

"Very tempting. Let me think about it. Tell you what: I'll come out to the Mystery Shack this afternoon, and you can take me to the spot where you three witnessed the meteor. Maybe we can get a reading on—excuse me!" His cell phone was going off.

Stanford took it from his pocket and glanced at the screen. "Hm. Area code 951. Don't know who this could be. Hello? Yes, this is Dr. Pines. Dr. Tremaine? Oh, you did? That's very kind. Thank you, it was my first article in many years! What? Why, yes—in fact, I was just speaking to my nephew Mason about the meteor, D.M. Pines, my coauthor and the photographer. He witnessed the meteor. Wait, wait—yes, that would—when? Today? Yes, I could certainly drive over to meet you—no, no, we have plenty of room, you'd be welcome to stay here—yes, well—yes, thank you again—all right, just give me a call when you've made the arrangements—Portland would be the nearest airport. Portland International. Just call and let me know the flight and the arrival time. Very well, I'll wait to hear from you."

Looking a little stunned, he turned off the phone. "Serendipity," he said. "That means—"

"When something happens by a lucky accident," Dipper said. "I know."

Ford chuckled ruefully. "Dipper, I keep forgetting that you're educated beyond most twelve-year-olds!"

Stanford could never remember his age. "I'm fourteen," Dipper said. But he grinned. "But, hey, I'm educated beyond most fourteen-year-olds, too!"

"Sorry," Stanford said with a rueful smile. "Well, that was Dr. Henry Tremaine, who read our article about the woodpecker-trap tree! Dr. Tremaine is like me, a scholar with a special interest in the unusual, the esoteric, the _outré_." He paused with an expectant glance toward Dipper.

Dipper sighed. "Unusual, unexpected, unorthodox, weird," he said. "You don't have to give me a vocabulary test, you know."

Ford chuckled. "Outstanding, Dipper! You are going to get into any university to which you care to apply. Well, to make the long story short, Dr. Tremaine wants to fly out today to investigate this meteor—so with your permission, we'll begin our quest tomorrow, not today."

"Sure," Dipper said. "That's fine. Uh—where's he coming from?"

"Massachusetts, of all places," Stanford said. "He teaches at one of the best institutions in the world as far as the study of metaphysical and supernatural subjects goes. It's Miskatonic University, in the little town of Arkham."


	3. Chapter 3

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 3**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Tuesday, June 17: Wendy and I did our exercise routine and run and finished just a few minutes ago. She mentioned that I ought to keep up my practice in sprinting, too, so we may go over to the high-school track a couple of days a week instead of doing our distance run._

 _I think if she could move to Piedmont, Coach Dinson would be ready to hire her on the spot as an assistant coach! At least I know she gets ME fired up._

 _So it turned out that Professor Tremaine couldn't get a flight until this morning. He'll leave Boston at 10:38 a.m.—I guess he's already left because of the time difference—and has to change planes in Denver. Then he'll fly in to Portland on United 416, arriving at five p.m. I asked great-uncle Ford if I could go with him to pick the Professor up, and he said he would be delighted to have the company._

 _I just hope that while he's behind the wheel he won't drift off into conversation and get distracted. He and Stan are both pretty awful drivers. Stan is so casual at it that he doesn't always pay attention, and as I say, Ford starts off on a lecture and starts gesturing and the first thing you know, a cow is staring in the side window at you and wondering why you parked in her pasture._

 _I wonder if Wendy would be able to drive us instead? She's a much better driver than either of my Grunkles. I may ask her after the crush of work subsides later on this morning. I know Soos would let her take off around three—late afternoons tend to be slow because the tour buses have all gone either east or west by then._

 _Right now she's upstairs showering and getting ready for work, so I'll ask her when she has a minute. Soos says he couldn't get along without Wendy, and I can't help thinking back when she'd do just about anything to dodge work! But like Mabel and me, she loves the old Shack and she really seems motivated these days._

 _OK, so when Ford heard yesterday that the professor wasn't going to be able to get in, he and Stan came over to the Shack around four o'clock. Mabel and I took them out to the bonfire clearing and into the meadow, and I found the approximate place where I had stood. I pointed out where I first saw the meteor, and Mabel chimed in: "I came out just a few seconds later, and by then it was over there—" she pointed to the east—"and I guess it was just three or four seconds until it disappeared."_

" _How did it disappear?" Ford asked._

 _Mabel and I agreed that it seemed to go down behind the tree line—but it's hard to tell, really, because from the meadow looking east you see hills with woods on them, but not the bluffs in the distance. Ford did some measuring with a couple of instruments. "I'd like to find another observer or two so we could triangulate the path," he said._

 _Grunkle Stan said, "What am I, chopped liver? Me an' Sheila saw it plain!"_

" _Yes, but where were you at the time?" Ford asked._

" _On 84, just past the Hood River Bridge goin' east. There's kinda a high bluff to the right, but it sailed in right over the car an' we saw it until it went outa sight behind the hills on the south-eastern horizon."_

 _Ford shook his head. "Too far away from Gravity Falls. I need someone from town who saw it."_

" _Drop in at the barber shop," Stan said._

" _What?"_

" _The barber shop, Poindexter! Ask around, an' somebody'll know somebody who saw the thing! This is a small town and people got nothin' much to talk about. Trust me on this one."_

" _That may be a good idea," Ford admitted._

" _Yeah, here's another one: While you're there, get a trim! I had a mullet once, Ford! You don't wanna have one. You just don't."_

" _Oh—do I need a haircut?" Ford asked, sounding surprised._

" _You could do with a shape-up trim," Mabel said, tilting her head to the side and studying him. "Grunkle Stan looks neat by comparison."_

" _Yeah," Stan said, "and THAT ain't somethin' you wanna hear! 'Course I got trimmed an' gussied up for my date—"_

 _Mabel jumped up and down. "Didja ask Sheila? Didja pop the question, Grunkle Stan, you sly dog, wink, wink?"_

 _Stan looked a little uncomfortable, I thought. He cleared his throat. "Well . . . let's just say that me and her are in the exploratory stage of maybe tryin' to develop an agreement bearin' on our respective matrimonial status an' leave it at that!"_

" _I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!" Mabel yelled. "I want to be at least a bridesmaid if not Maid of Honor, get me? This is non-negotiable!"_

" _Well—I dunno. I mean, it happens, Ford's gotta be best man, so what about Dipper?"_

 _Mabel turned purple. "Who CARES about Dipper? Um. I mean—make him an usher! Yeah, he looks great in a tux!"_

" _I do not!"_

" _Pacifica says you're HOT in a tux!" Mabel shot back._

" _I wore a tuxedo just that one time and—wait, what?"_

 _But it was too late. The conversation train had pulled out of the station and left me standing on the platform._

 _Pacifica said I looked "hot?" Pacifica Northwest? I mean, I know she had kind of a crush on me there for a little while, and she likes to flirt a lot, but—wow. Just wow._

" _Where is Pacifica anyway?" I asked at last, after some of the strategizing had died down a little._

" _Huh?" Mabel asked. "Oh, Pacifica! She's in France until the end of the month with her parents. Her dad's working with some French company to market his wi-fi mud flaps in Europe. Didn't I tell you that before we left Piedmont?"_

" _No, you didn't."_

" _Oh. Well, she is. She texts me about every other day. She's having a great time."_

" _Meeting any cute French guys?" I asked._

 _Mabel laughed. "What? Dippity-Doo Pines, you're jealous!"_

" _Is she, though?"_

" _Yeah, actually she's meeting lots. She sends me selfies with them. Some really good-lookin' hunks, too, Brobro!"_

" _Good for her," I said, sighing with relief. Anything to take her sights off me._

 _I started to wonder who else might think I looked hot if I wore a tux . . .._

* * *

Dr. Henry Tremaine was not a good air traveler. A slight, thin, nervous man with a mop of gray hair, thick spectacles, rumpled clothing, and a decidedly old-fashioned air—he had been raised by two elderly great-aunts into whose antimacassared and aspidistraed Colonial home no modern intrusions such as radio or television had been allowed and who barely tolerated the electric light and indoor plumbing. As a result, his sensibilities yielded towards the mind-sets and attitudes of the early twentieth century, not those of the twenty-first.

Superadded to these impressions, though, must be the salient fact that Tremaine had a first-class mind, acquisitive of knowledge and averse to reflexive doubting of any unconventional proposition until he could, by employing his wits and his senses, either approve of the information suggested or disprove and therefore dismiss it. Such learning and such a readiness to seek answers rather than reasons for ridicule had led him down strange pathways and into chtonic, tenebrous regions into which no ordinary scholar would have set foot.

Also, he was, as hinted, a sloppy dresser and very absent-minded. Or rather he evinced a tendency to ignore the small things of everyday life, such as meals, shaving, or changing his clothing, when focusing his attention narrowly upon some troubling datum of science, folklore, or myth—for in his esoteric studies, all three tended to coalesce.

Although he had flown a few times before, his present mission, from Boston to Denver and thence on to Portland, Oregon, was by far his most extended trip by air. He sat in seat F-1, a window seat forward of the wing, and ignored the efforts of his neighbor to his right in the middle seat, an overweight man in his forties, to persuade him of the utmost importance of purchasing (apparently before the airplane could land in Denver) a comprehensive insurance policy on his life.

"I am not interested," he informed the man after the initial approach. When the insurance salesman persisted, offering him the rationale that a policy would make certain the earthly comfort of his closest kin, Tremaine responded in his flat New England way, "I haven't any kin." When asked about his care for the respectful disposal of his own remains, the good doctor had answered, "I should think that would be the very last of my concerns."

To ward off further unwanted attention, Professor Tremaine had taken from his carry-on briefcase a book, or to be more precise a photographic reproduction of a book, printed on ordinary paper and bound in heavy card stock, for the original volume from which it had been copied, reputed to be one of only four surviving exemplars in existence, reposed in the Peabody Rare Book Room of the Miskatonic University Library. He folded down the tray ahead of him, leaned forward, and buried his gaze in the pages of the facsimile of Bowdoin's _Unspeakable Cults,_ originally self-published in the latter half of the 19th century by its author, a man whose apparently ordinary life had been gainsaid by his spectacular and completely revolting way of leaving it.

His one book, published in a very limited edition, attracted the hostile attention of the authorities, who had tracked down and burned virtually all of the 1000 copies printed in the initial pressing. In the year 2014, it or any one of the surviving four would have fetched a great price at auction.

For some reason, the kind of buyer most interested in such books would most likely be possessed of an adequate fortune, gained by means unknown, to purchase it.

Tremaine found the page he had marked and began re-reading the passage:

* * *

… _for I, too, was once a scoffer and a doubter, but that was ere I became aware of the Shadows that lurk on the very fringes of the daylight world, deep Shadows of the soul and mind as well as of the physical realm, that conceal within their atramentous depths certain eldritch horrors, abominations beyond the mind of Man to conceive or his tongue to express their twisted forms and minds._

 _One wonders if the Solar System itself, this island of sanity in an arrational and heartless universe, is bounded by such a realm of Shadows; for, it is certain, there far beyond Neptune rolls the dreadful world Yuggoth, given over to ice eternal and the timeless dreaming of certain Great Old Ones, trapped there by their own lust to regain their ascendancy over the Earth, once theirs but now in the possession of mere Men, pitiful creatures of merely three dimensions and limited perceptions._

 _The demented sage Aham-Shariukin, dweller in the now-vanished Babylon of five thousand years ago, student of the stars, recorded in cuneiform script on clay tablets his hypothesis that from the region of that dead, dread world there comes to Earth once every five hundred and five years a comet, not as brilliant as Halley's namesake, indeed a dark comet, all but invisible to the unaided eye, accompanied in its centuries-long ellipse by fragmentary material that, as surely as the sweep of the Earth in its orbit, produces spectacular meteors each time the comet shuns the ice between the stars and seeks for a few brief weeks the warmth of the Sun._

Now _, scientists know that meteors are not portents sent by angry gods, but stones from space, haplessly caught by the gravitational attraction of our planet and impelled into our atmosphere to meet their fiery demise; but HOW could an ancient Babylonian astronomer know this? And how could he have divined that meteors often accompany comets, for even the learned Romans called them "hairy stars" and believed them to be chariots sent by the gods to fetch the souls of outstanding heroes (I could adduce Julius Caesar; see Ovid) to the celestial realms?_

 _Yet Aham-Shariukin assuredly wrote that meteors were formed by the fracturing of cometary heads and the spalling of material from their surfaces!_

 _Yet not ALL meteors are so formed. Waxing metaphysical and allusive, our Babylonian scholar notes that at each visit of the strange dark comet strange outbreaks of horror erupt upon the face of our planet. Mad wars waged for no reason, upheavals of the Earth as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the visitation of indescribable THINGS from beyond the stars, all and more are the earmarks of the comet's return._

 _More worrying, the astronomer, through arcane and complex formulae that I frankly cannot in my ignorance follow,_ _ **predicted future cometary visitations.**_ _They were to occur in the Christian era in the years we designate 499, 1004, and 1509._

 _History tells the tale: the utter collapse of Roman civilization, admittedly begun with the invasion of the Eternal City in 476, became astonishingly complete in the brief span of that one year, 499 A.D. Though Barbarian intruders bear the brunt of historical blame, it is well known among scholars of the arcane that the "Star Madness" that broke out on the frontiers of Northern Europe especially led to mass slaughters as comrades and relatives turned on each other savagely, depleting the population and driving the final nails in the coffin of Rome._

 _The year 1004 saw the first outbreak of the Black Death in the hills and mountains north of India, a disease like none other Man had ever known; and from thence it spread eastward and westward, killing millions everywhere, and in many waves threatening to depopulate Europe entirely._

 _And in 1509, archaeologists tell us, in the New World the highest and most advanced native civilizations utterly died out. Empires that had once spread over thousands of square miles vanished, snuffed like a candle; and only the Conquistadores preserved some fragments of legend speaking of a shambling Thing that came "from beyond the stars" to torment the peoples who resorted to self-murder to evade it or else died in utmost agony._

 _The next visitation, the scholar predicts, will come in the year 2014, a hundred and fifty years from now._

 _I thank God that long before it arrives, I shall be safely within the embrace of the grave._

* * *

Tremaine's unwelcome neighbor leaned against his shoulder, breathing sour breath into his face, and asked, "Whatcha readin' there, pal? Damn thick book! Stephen King, huh?"

"No," Tremaine said shortly. " _Fifty Shades of Grey_ , the original British unexpurgated edition _._ I'm into torturing strangers I meet at random."

At least the man ceased bothering him for the duration of the flight.


	4. Chapter 4

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 4**

As Dipper expected, Soos cheerfully let Wendy off early that Tuesday afternoon. Shortly before three o'clock, Ford pulled up in his handsome—and yet dented—Lincoln. Wendy took off her name badge, and she and Dipper went out to the car.

"Hiya, Dr. Pines," Wendy said. "Thanks for givin' me a chance to drive your car! It's slick, dude."

Stanford had stepped out of the car. "My pleasure, Wendy. Truth be told, I am not yet entirely comfortable driving, especially on Interstates. I manage well enough in the Valley, though. Oh, one moment." He walked around to the passenger seat, climbed in, and said, "Now open the driver's door."

Wendy tugged, and from inside the car Ford pushed with his foot and the door popped open. "Just a little ding," Ford said. "I'll have to take it to the shop to get it mended and the door fixed."

Dipper climbed in on the driver's side, and Ford scooted over. Wendy came in after Dipper. "There a trick to closin' the door again?"

"Just slam hard," Ford said.

Wendy did, and the wing mirror fell out of its shell.

"Oh, I forgot about that," Ford said. "One moment." He got out of the car again, went around and picked up the mirror, and then fitted it back into place. When he climbed back in once more, he said, "That happened at the same time as the dent. I'll have to make a note to remind myself to have the mirror attended to as well."

"Buckle up, dudes," Wendy said. "We're on our way."

By the Interstate it was better than a two-hour trip to the airport, but that turned out not to be a problem, because Dr. Tremaine's plane was about thirty minutes late in landing. He called Ford at 5:35 to tell him that they had just taxied in and that he would meet them in the baggage area in a few minutes.

Wendy found a slot in the short-term parking garage, and the three of them walked beneath a cantilevered shelter across the pavement, past the ground-transportation loading area, and into the airport. They saw the escalators and then found their way to the green-carpeted baggage claim area.

Dipper spotted the baggage carousel that corresponded with Dr. Tremaine's flight number—not yet holding any luggage. But just as they came near it, the bags started popping out, and before very many minutes had gone by, passengers started to come up and crane, peering as the suitcases took their carnival ride around and around.

"Bet that's him," Wendy said.

A fussy-looking little man—slender, but shorter than Wendy—in a pale blue shirt and a gray tweedy jacket with leather patches on the elbow came hurrying up, clutching a briefcase.

Stanford met him. "Dr. Tremaine, I presume."

"Yes, yes," the small man said impatiently. "I'm trying to find a Dr. Stanford Pines."

"I'm Stanford Pines," Dipper's great-uncle said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Oh. Oh! I apologize for my brusqueness. Henry, sir. Good heavens, you're polydactylic!"

Wendy whispered to Dipper, "I thought that was, like, the meter that Shakespeare wrote poetry in!"

"Six-fingered," he whispered back.

Ford was laughing. "Yes, born with six fingers, a genetic aberration. It's never bothered me though—physically, I mean. Dr. Tremaine—"

"Henry, please," the smaller, gray-haired man said. "I may be a product of New England, but I try not to exhibit over-much New England reticence!" He laughed, and Dipper supposed he had made a joke.

"Henry, then," Ford said. "And you must call me Stanford, or just Ford, as my friends do. Henry, welcome to Oregon. These young people are Miss Wendy Corduroy, who is acting chauffeur today, and my great-nephew Mason Pines, generally known as Dipper."

"Charmed," Tremaine said, making a courtly bow toward Wendy. He shook hands with Dipper. "Oh, Dr. Pines's research assistant! My heavens, I'd imagined you as a graduate student, my boy. What are you, a freshman?"

"Rising sophomore," Dipper said with a smile.

"Remarkable, remarkable!" Tremaine shook his head. "I always say that the incoming crop of University students look younger than they should, though! Well, lad, I congratulate you on working with Dr. Pines! You're off to a fine start in your university education."

Dipper didn't know whether to explain that he was a rising high-school sophomore, but he took too much time to explain, and Dr. Tremaine suddenly said, "Oh, there goes my suitcase, blast it! Someone stop it before it gets away!"

"On it," Wendy said, dodging expertly through the crowd. She found a clear space near the spot where the bags made their last turn, snagged the suitcase, and used its momentum to lift it up and swing it around. "Here you are, sir!"

"Excellent, young woman!" Dr. Tremaine said.

"I'll carry it for you," Dipper offered. That turned out to be a struggle, because from the weight of the suitcase he judged that Tremaine had packed not only clothes, but also several weighty books. But he didn't complain as Ford led them out, across the busy ground-transportation lanes, and into the parking deck.

Wendy had the keys, and she unlocked the car and the trunk. "You guys ride in the back and talk," she told Ford. "Dipper and I will take the front seat."

Tremaine made no objection. He and Ford got into the Lincoln, while Wendy, concealed behind the open trunk lid, helped Dipper hoist the heavy suitcase into the trunk. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome, dude! Wonder what the old guy packed in that thing. Weighs a ton, man!"

Dipper and Wendy got into the car, Wendy started the engine, and they headed out.

She asked if anyone wanted to stop for dinner. She might as well have asked the car for all the response she got. The two researchers in the back were in urgent conversation, very animated and yet not quite loud enough for Dipper or Wendy to follow it.

They hit the Interstate, with its usual clog of traffic right around the city, but once they had gone a few miles the cars thinned out and Wendy made good time. "Maybe you can teach Grunkle Ford a little about driving," Dipper suggested quietly.

"Dunno, man. I did great in drivers' training, but I don't think I'd have the patience!"

When they were close to the Bridge of the Gods, Wendy spoke up loudly enough to interrupt the two men in the back seat. "Guys! Dipper and I are hungry! We're going to pull off for dinner. Is that OK with you?"

"Dinner?" Dr. Tremaine said, sounding surprised. "Surely I've had my dinner already—no, wait, I haven't. I keep forgetting the time difference! To me it seems closer to 9:45 than 6:45! Yes, I could certainly eat something."

"Thank you, Wendy," Stanford said. "Do you know any place?"

"There's a restaurant with a good view of the bridge," Wendy told him. "Don't know how the food is, but I've noticed it before. This is our exit."

The Bridgeview was more of a diner than a regular restaurant, but it was crowded, and they were lucky to get a booth next to the window looking out over the Columbia River and the steel-truss bridge high above it. Neither Tremaine nor Stanford was in the least fussy about food, and when Stanford ordered salmon chowder and a trip through the salad bar, Tremaine echoed him.

Wendy and Dipper also asked for the salad bar, but they decided to split an order of salmon and chips between them. Dipper discovered that he'd been famished, but gallantly he allowed Wendy to have the very last French fry.

Feeling considerably better, they all got back in the car. This time the two passengers in back were not so animated—or so quiet. Dipper head Stanford say, "So you're convinced, then, that the meteor seen over Gravity Falls came from the region of Pluto?"

"Perhaps the Oort Cloud," Tremaine said. "But know this: Pluto is not the final planet in the Solar System. Oh, I know the youngsters have demoted it to 'dwarf planet,' but I'm an old fogey. No, Ford, beyond Pluto, where the cold, dark Universe borders our small stellar island of sanity, lies Yuggoth, the legendary forgotten planet, invisible to us either because of its great distance and darkness of hue—or else concealed from us by the darkest of magics!" He paused and then murmured, "Of course, you're a scientist. I suppose you have no belief in magic."

In his most thoughtful tone, Ford began, "Actually . . . ."

* * *

 **A fragment of an ancient book.** The following manuscript pages, translated by an unknown hand from Latin (according to the best guess of scholars) is from _The Tale of Forbidden Names,_ attributed to a student of John Dee, ca. 1600. This is the only leaf from that book known to exist today. It is in the private collection of Dr. Henry Tremaine of Miskatonic University. He brought photocopies of both sides of the leaf with him to Portland, Oregon, and shared the copies with Dr. Stanford Pines.

Perhaps unwisely, Dr. Pines inadvertently left his copy-of-a-copy in plain view, and his great-nephew Mason "Dipper" Pines had a chance to read what no one should ever read.

The excerpt follows. You have been warned.

 _Know ye, then, ye who dwell in blessed ignorance, that this world is NOT the only world, nor its inhabitants the only living things in the Universe!_

 _For lo, eon upon eons in the past, the Great Old Ones held sway and dominion over our planet, and they were without number, and their minds were not as our minds._

 _Who were they, my brothers in humanity? How were they reckoned?_

 _In their time of triumph, no human yet lived. At the time of their downfall, humanity had not yet emerged. And still, weary centuries passed, and millennia, and more, and then came our forebears, rising up from ape to become mankind._

 _And they knew of the Great Old Ones, and told terrified legends of them in the flickering light of fires made in caves;_

 _And they clustered in tight groups, fearing the dark, as well they should;_

 _And in hushed and fearful tones, they whispered that not all the Great Old Ones had perished in the cataclysm that ended their rule;_

 _[page torn here] . . . the frightful Shoggoths, of which no man should have knowledge._

 _And the terrified men of old said, yea, that though the remnant beings from the dawn of time that were left behind lingered in uneasy slumbers and dreamed of seizing the fair Earth again for their own, yet never yet woke, certain Great Old Ones yet lingered in the Earth;_

 _And unwisely, some men did worship them._

 _One is Nyarlathotep, Dweller in Darkness, whose protean forms are legion: a tall, dark man; the Crawling Chaos; or a being of utmost night with bat-wings._

 _And yea, one is Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, the Goat with a Thousand Young, she whom the Ancients mistakenly called Pan, a seductive creature who craves worship and perverts the impulse of humans to adore a god, who grants unto her wickedest and most depraved followers magical power, for she is the Mother of Witches._

 _And yea, one is Azathoth, the infinite sultan-demon, that bubbles and seethes in ultimate chaos in the unknown angle of space that no human may visit and from which none ever return sane._

 _And yea, one is Yog-Sothoth, now locked beyond the bounds of Time and Space that we know; impotent and yet hungry for dominion; seemingly mindless, and yet it knows all and sees all and spins dark unknown destinies for us all._

 _And yea, one is Great Cthulhu, imprisoned in the sunken city of R'lyeh, drowned and yet not dead, for he is undying and one day his dark dreams of return will become reality and will overthrow reality and then the reign . . . .[page torn here]_


	5. Chapter 5

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 5**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Wednesday, June 18: It's a coolish morning, pretty heavily overcast, with the damp feel of coming rain in the air, though it seems to be holding back so far._

 _Wendy and I took our nature running trail out to the pond, around it, and back, and finished our run just in time to see Grunkle Ford's back Lincoln parking in front of the Shack. Ford and Dr. Tremaine were inside, and Ford rolled down his window as I trotted over._

" _Good morning, Mason," he said. I noticed yesterday he was calling me that in front of the professor. "We're about to set off to explore the region where the meteorite may have struck. Care to come with us?"_

" _Sure! Give me five minutes to shower and change!" I said._

 _As we went into the Shack, Wendy, sounding worried, said, "Uh, Dipper? I kinda wish you wouldn't go, man. Give this one a pass. I got sort of a bad feeling about it."_

" _Are you sure it isn't just because of last night?" I asked, pausing on the bottom step. During our run, she'd told me that Manly Dan's grumbling about her spending too much time at the Shack and not enough at home doing her chores, and he'd threatened again to send her up north to her cousin Steve's logging camp, where she'd have to work under the supervision of her older brother Junior._

" _He knows that's, like, the LAST thing I'd want to do," Wendy had complained as she ran. So she'd agreed to go straight home after work at least until Saturday, which is Summerween this year—and also one of Manly Dan's bowling nights, so it doesn't matter if she stays out late. "After that, though, I'll hafta keep goin' home on time for at least a week or two until he cools down."_

 _Now, standing on the lowest step and just for that moment, I noticed, being a little bit taller than Wendy—weird feeling—I said, "I really hope you're not getting in trouble with your dad just because of me."_

" _No, man," she said. "You know you're not causin' anything! It's just Dad bein' Dad. It's cool, I can handle him. He just misses havin' me around to constantly pick up after him an' my brothers. He needs time to cool down from his mad, that's all." Then she sighed. "You're goin' with Ford anyway, aren't you?"_

" _I want to," I admitted._

 _She gave me a smile and a rueful shake of her head (Note to self: look up "rueful." I think that's what I mean). "OK, I give up. I know you live for this kinda thing, Dip. But please listen to me: You be real careful, hear me?"_

" _I won't take any chances," I promised her._

 _I ran upstairs and was in and out of the shower in two minutes, and then I was dry and clothed in the next three, putting on my heaviest pair of jeans, a red T-shirt, and my newest cargo vest, pretty much indistinguishable from my old one. I'd already packed my backpack, and as I snatched my trucker's hat from the hook on the wall, I grabbed the pack and then ran down the stairs. At the bottom, Mabel blocked my way, an annoyed expression on her face. "Brobro, you're really going on a mystery hunt without me?" She sounded hurt._

 _I shrugged. "Mabel, come along if you want, but we may be off in the woods for hours, maybe even until late tonight!"_

 _She looked bothered by that. "But–but Candy and Grenda are coming over later, sometime after noon, and I want them to get to know Widdles, and–oh, shoot! OK, go ahead, but don't get into trouble for a change. Hey, you haven't even had breakfast! Here, at least take a couple of these and some milk!" She tossed me two wrapped high-protein bars and then hurriedly poured a 22-ounce plastic cup about half full of milk and snapped a plastic cap on it and stuck a straw in._

" _Thanks, Sis," I said, stuffing the bars into a vest pocket and taking the milk in my free hand. "I'll call you as soon as we know something."_

" _Oh, yeah, if you can get any reception out there," she grumped._

 _I took a sip of the milk, thanked her again, and ran on out to the car. This time I got in the backseat. "Sorry for eating," I told great-uncle Ford as I unwrapped one of the bars (peanut butter and dark chocolate), "but we just did our run and I didn't have time for breakfast."_

" _Quite all right," Ford said._

" _How often do you run?" Dr. Tremaine asked me, sounding interested._

" _Five times a week," I told him. "We do two days, then a day off, then three days, then a day off, or pretty close to that. About four miles in an hour of running, or nearly. Probably more like three and three-quarters most times. We do rotate the days off, though."_

" _Mason is also a sprinter," Ford said, sounding proud. "State champion in his division, in fact!"_

" _Impressive!" Dr. Tremaine said. "I was a runner, too, in my college days, a letterman in track. A miler, though today that category no longer exists. Everything's gone metric nowadays. Keep it up, my boy, and you'll never regret it. It's always wise for a scholar in our kind of field to stay in good physical condition!"_

 _I realized why Ford and Dr. Tremaine both looked sort of different. They were both wearing khakis, long-sleeved shirts with two big pockets on the chest, and matching trousers, dressed for the outdoors. They had also stored a couple of backpacks in the floor behind the front passenger-side seat, one large, one small. It looked like they meant business._

 _At the foot of the driveway, near the new sign, Ford turned the Lincoln right, and we headed up toward the place in the high hills where it simply circled back on itself, a few miles away. Except for a few old and rutted unpaved logging roads, there really wasn't much up that way after you got maybe four miles from the Shack._

 _The highway goes uphill and down and curves sharply back and forth as the land rises. Tall trees, pines and then bigleaf maples and Douglas firs, close in on both sides until you almost feel you're driving through a tunnel. There are a few houses scattered back in there, some small farms that sometimes have practically vertical fields (how do they plow them?) and not much else—a tiny small-engine repair shop in a building about the size of the Shack's gift shop, a couple of places that stack and sell firewood, but no hamburger stands or even gas stations. It gets lonely pretty quickly._

 _As if continuing a conversation, Ford said, "As I was telling you, Henry, Mason was one of the eyewitnesses to the meteor's descent. I located three others in town who took me to the sites where they had been when the meteor appeared, and from their estimates I have roughly calculated the body's angle of descent–quite steep, actually, approaching sixty-five degrees. Yet, even though they describe it as burning with an intense white-green blaze, their impression was that it traveled rather slowly."_

" _That is not uncommon," Dr. Tremaine murmured. "The green fireballs of the mid-twentieth century were oftentimes reported as traveling no faster than a light aeroplane."_

 _Huh. That was the first time I ever heard anyone give the word that old-fashioned pronunciation, like "air-o-plane." I said, "Green fireballs. Those were the ones Dr. La Paz studied."_

 _I was sitting behind Ford, on the driver's side of the car, and Dr. Tremaine swiveled his head to look back at me with his bushy gray eyebrows raised in a surprised expression. From that angle and with his small, sharp nose, he looked sort of, I don't know, birdlike, I guess. He said, "Yes, Dr. Lincoln La Paz. I met him once, when I was a young man in the 1970s and he was retired. We had an interesting discussion of his work with the Lake Murray meteorite of 1933. It had a most unusual chemical composition. If the Gravity Falls meteorite is what I hope it to be, it might prove to be similar."_

" _Um–what do you hope it is, sir?" I asked._

" _I hope," he said with a sad sort of smile, "or actually, I pray, that it is only an ordinary hexahedrite or octahedrite iron meteorite." He turned back around and stared out at the trees we flashed past. On a sunny day they slashed you with alternate light and shade, but on a cloudy day like this one they just looked dark, faded, and gloomy. "But I fear–I fear it may be something very, very different."_

 _Ford said, "You may want to glance at that paper folded in the outer pocket of my backpack–the black backpack, that is. It's from an old scientific report about another very unusual meteorite. This one fell to earth way back in June of 1882 in Massachusetts."_

" _The Tremaine mentioned in it, one of the three authors, was in fact my great-grandfather," Mr. Tremaine told me. "He was a professor of chemistry and chairman of the department at the time at Miskatonic. Actually, professors at that university run in my family. We Tremaines go far back in Arkham history, and—but I'm beginning to ramble. The other two authors were also on the faculty of the University."_

 _I moved the smaller green backpack to get to the black one and took out and unfolded a photocopy of a few pages from a science journal._

* * *

 **An Excerpt from** _ **The New England Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology**_ **,** Series 1, Volume XXVI number 2 (Summer 1891), pages 331-334: "A description and analyses of an anomalous meteorite," by Dr. Clifford Armitage, Dr. Walter D. B. W. Tremaine, and Dr. Amos N. Peabody, all of Miskatonic University.

... the pitted and scorched, apparently metallic, mass we discovered in the crater remained exceptionally hot. The farmer who owned the land, "Nathaniel Pearson" as we call him here (to ensure his privacy), informed us that the meteorite had visibly shrunk since its impact around noon the day before.

The three of us descended into the shallow crater, despite the radiative heat of the stone from space, and with difficulty retrieved a small portion of the stony-metallic body–with difficulty because standing close to the meteorite was like standing next to a blast furnace, and because the body of the meteorite seemed curiously plastic, rather like an extremely viscous mass of tar, though much denser and with the grating texture of a coarse and concentrated still-liquid concrete.

At length Professor Peabody managed to gouge, rather than chip, a sample fragment that weighed between five and six pounds. We borrowed a galvanized steel pail from the farmer and deposited our specimen therein.

From the time we collected the specimen to the time it vanished, some fourteen to sixteen hours elapsed, time enough for us to confirm that even away from the main mass the material never grew appreciably cooler than it had been when first collected; that it was luminescent in the dark (though no two of us could agree upon the colour of its peculiar aura); and that it certainly shrank and dwindled at an accelerating pace, as though consuming itself.

In the time we had, we performed a good many standard tests. Spectroscopically, the meteorite was absolutely unidentifiable. Instead of the expected spectrograph indicative of the typical composition of an iron meteorite, the specimen evinced a bizarre group of shining bands that resemble no known element (See Figures A, B, and C). The borax bead test was completely negative; and though we observers subjected the specimen to intense heating by means of an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, it remained utterly nonvolatile. Curiously, the heating did not seem to communicate itself to the material. After five full minutes under a flame at 700 degrees Centigrade, the stone maintained its original radiative surface heat of 172 degrees, not increasing by even a fraction.

Though of evidently metallic composition, it was not brittle, but proved markedly malleable when placed upon an anvil and struck with a hammer. It may be worthy of note that within twenty-four hours of utilization the entire anvil had been completely oxidized to rust and crumbled like loose ash with the touch of a finger.

Dr. Armitage of the Physics Department and Dr. Tremaine of the Chemistry Department together thoroughly tested a small fragment of the specimen in a crucible. Nitric acid and aqua regia reacted in some way, hissing and sputtering when they came in contact with the substance, though no chemical alteration was observed. A dozen other reagents were similarly introduced to the specimen with no detectable results (see Appendix 1 for the complete list).

Beyond doubt, the meteorite was in some sense metallic. It was weakly magnetic, deflecting a standard compass when it was brought to within two feet of the specimen, and attracted iron and steel. After immersion in the solvents, the chip displayed under 30x magnification faint Widmannstätten figures such as those reliably displayed by meteoric iron.

Most peculiar of all, when we removed the original specimen from the galvanized pail, we discovered that the metal of the bottom, wherever it touched the sample, had been eaten away. We placed the remnant of the specimen in a 1000-ml beaker, assuming that the metal had interacted with the substance of the meteorite and that it might possibly cool in the inert glass.

We were mistaken, for whatever constituted the meteor seemed to have an unusual affinity for the silicon in the glass. Eventually the beaker itself melted, as though subjected to the heat of a glassblower's furnace (albeit the temperature of the glass matched that of the ambient air, not of the fragment within it; even when nearly liquid, the glass felt cool to the touch). The beaker curled inward and as the meteoric fragment sublimed, so did the glass. Not a vestige of either was left behind the next morning, other than an irregular charred spot upon the wooden shelf where the beaker had stood.

Perhaps it is out of place in a disinterested scientific report, but Dr. Peabody wishes us to add the following information: A young graduate student, "Benjamin Bridger" (this is again a pseudonym to preserve a decent privacy for the young man's family), who had worked closely with the fragment and had supervised the solvent tests, did not report to the laboratory the next morning. Around noon on that day, as the others were preparing to return to the farm where the main part of the meteorite still lay within its crater, Dr. Tremaine received an urgent request to repair to the dormitory where young Bridger, a promising chemist, lived.

His room was on the top floor; his neighbors on either side had heard him the previous night, speaking loudly and incoherently; they assumed he was arguing with someone. When the cleaning woman came round just before noon (a time when the young man was normally away in class), she found the door not only locked but, after unlocking, impossible to open. She summoned help.

In the end, a custodian climbed a ladder to the high window and had to break out a pane to unlock and open it. The room was disordered beyond belief, quite out of keeping with Mr. Bridger's normally neat habits; it looked as though an unhinged madman had rampaged through it, upsetting, ripping, and destroying everything within reach.

The custodian found the young man dead inside the room, hanging from a noose looped over an exposed water pipe. The end of the rope had been tied around the door handle, and the young man's weight had pulled the door shut and had held it that way against efforts to open it outwards.

Mr. Bridger had been under no apparent stress, had no romantic or monetary worries, and had no obvious motive for suicide. Ye the had certainly done away with himself, for next to his desk, which lay turned on its side–he had evidently stood upon it and stepped off to do the deed–he had left a handwritten note, scrawled as though written in great agitation, yet recognizably in his own penmanship. It read only "For God's sake destroy that stone before it destroys us all."

Though stunned by the unexpected tragedy, later that day we returned to the crater, where we found the remaining body of the meteorite much reduced in size. We discovered one perfect globule protruding from its top surface which, when broken, emitted no vapors, leaving nothing but a void in the body of the meteorite. The specimens we took on that second visit were just as baffling as the first had been, and they also melted away.

That night a terrific thunderstorm arose, and the farmer Pearson told us later that the meteorite "drew down the lightning." No fewer than six successive bolts struck it with explosive force, and whether because of that or for some more esoteric reason, the entire body of the thing vanished. In the laboratory, our last fragments of it shrank until, at the end of a week, nothing was left. We submit this disappointing and cryptic report in hopes that, if in the future any similar messengers from the fathomless gulfs of space strike the earth, and should their properties resemble this one's, scientists who follow us may have better fortune than did we in our examination of the Great Miskatonic Meteor of June, 1882.

Professor Clifford Armitage, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., Department of Physics

Professor Walter B.D.W. Tremaine, B.A., M.S., Ph.D., Department of Chemistry

Professor Amos N. Peabody, B.S., M.S. (Physics), M.S. (Geology), Ph.D., Department of Geology


	6. Chapter 6

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 6**

Ford, Professor Tremaine, and Dipper drove as far as they could by car and reached a public picnic area on the right, three redwood tables and benches beneath the shade of four sassafras trees—transplants, probably set there by the county since they were not native to Oregon. The area around the tables had been graveled, and Ford pulled well off the highway before parking.

"We go on foot from here," he announced. When he got out, he picked up from the front seat a wide-brimmed Aussie-style cloth hat with a mesh crown and clapped it on his head. That surprised Dipper, but what surprised him more was when Dr. Tremaine climbed out on the passenger side–and donned a pith helmet, like someone in an old jungle movie.

Both men wore heavy hiking boots, making Dipper wonder if his sneakers would be up to the task. And all he had as headgear was his normal pine-tree trucker hat. He passed the backpacks to both men, then got out himself and donned his own pack. The picnic area actually perched on the lip of an overlook—through the intervening trees, Dipper could see the gray bluffs and two small waterfalls cascading down into what became the main river feeding the town lake.

On a sunny day, it might have been a beautiful view, but he had no time to soak it in. The two paranormal researchers were helping each other into their backpacks and obviously were ready to get underway.

Dipper shifted his own pack straps until it rode comfortably on his back. "How do we know what direction to take, great-uncle Ford?" he asked.

Ford, making a few adjustments to the straps of his own backpack, chuckled. "We don't–yet! Let me introduce you to a new creation of Fiddleford's. It's a few years ahead of the market, as usual." Smiling broadly, Ford unlocked the trunk of the Lincoln and took out something that looked at first like a piece of computer equipment meant for cooling–it seemed to have four fans, anyway. It looked like a rectangular black plastic frame about three feet by two feet, but with a flattish dome in the center and four long spiky legs on the corners, next to the fans. "Recognize this?" he held it horizontally.

"A drone!" Dipper exclaimed.

"Correct, Mason. And inside the transparent dome, it's equipped with a miniaturized television camera and a GPS signaling device in case we lose it. It will literally call for help and in effect say 'Here I am!' until we locate it again."

"Remarkable piece of equipment," Tremaine said. "I wish I'd had one when I undertook that ghastly business in Borneo a few years back! How does it work, Ford?"

Stanford turned it from side to side and pointed as he spoke. "Well, it is powered by an advanced solid-oxide fuel cell using a special grade of propane. The fuel cell provides about 245 watts of electricity that power the rotors. Its optimum cruising altitude is 1200 to 1500 feet, and the television camera can be remotely controlled, as of course can the drone itself. The ultra-miniaturized computer built into this-" he held up something that looked like a video-game controller–"gives us one joystick for the throttle and rotation. The second is for forward thrust, reverse thrust, and turns. The buttons control ascent and descent, turn the video on or off, and adjust the trim. The speed ranges from "hover" to about fifteen miles per hour. And this second unit–" he produced a tablet–"shows us what the camera sees."

"Remarkable!" Tremaine repeated.

"The drone can cruise for about six to seven hours before needing a refill of propane. In a forested area, our communication range from the controller to the drone is about four miles. What I propose to do is to fly the drone at 1200 feet while setting the camera to wide-angle distance mode. If there is an impact crater within perhaps seven miles, we should be able to see it, or at least some trace of it, and the camera can zoom in. If we don't find one, we hike in the most likely direction–south–and after four miles, try again. We can cover a lot of territory in that way."

"And you can actually fly this contraption?"

"Well, no," Ford confessed. He put a six-fingered hand on Dipper's shoulder. "That's why we brought Mason along!"

"Me?" Dipper yipped. "I've never flown one of those things!"

"True," Ford said, "but I happen to know that you have great expertise at computer games! This is just a variant of one of those. While we're in this clearing, take it up and see how quickly you can get the hang of it. Here, you take the controller computer. I'll take the receiver. Just a second." Ford walked the drone over to the highway–no traffic at all way up here–and set it down. "I'm starting the engine. Set the controller for neutral lift."

"This thing at the left? OK. Uh, got it."

The electric engine hummed, and the whirring blades made a buzzing sound. Ford stepped back.

"Now keep the direction control neutral and slowly activate the ascent control."

Dipper did–and the drone rose in a stately, slow way into the air, up above the surrounding trees. Next he activated the camera and looked at the receiver that Ford held to see an image of the three of them on the ground. He could zoom in close enough to see details as small as the stitch pattern on the brim of Ford's hat, or go wide-angle and take in a great swath of the forest all around the picnic area. After a few minutes, he said, "It's not as hard as I thought it would be!"

"Youth!" Tremaine said. "Oh, to have that ready adaptability!"

"Or to be related to someone who has it, Henry!" Ford said with a laugh. "All right–take it up to twelve hundred feet and keep the lens at wide angle. We'll do one quick sweep of the immediate area, then hike a couple of miles to the south, while I keep an eye on the screen. Take it, Dipper!"

"Dipper? Oh, yes, the lad's nickname!" Tremaine said.

"Actually, I prefer it to 'Mason,' sir," Dipper told him. "I think I'll only use my real name when I publish something."

They soon lost sight of the drone from the ground, but fortunately the GPS that Fiddleford had included allowed a small insert display to indicate where the craft was and to warn them if it got more than three miles away from the controller. Dipper kept it moving at a little better than hiking speed, circling it around them. The touchiest bit was maintaining a steady altitude at 1200 feet. He constantly had to fidget with the altitude control.

Ford held the display receiver, tilted so Dipper could see it too, and spotted a good many clearings, but nothing that looked like a crater, and so they walked on. Occasionally Ford stumbled—he kept his eyes on the screen, not always on where he was going, and kept up a constant stream of directions to Dipper for managing the drone—but he avoided any serious spills.

If Dipper hadn't been forced to concentrate on the controls so much, he would have enjoyed the hike. The cloud cover kept the woods cool and dim, with a kind of green light that filtered through the leaves, and the air smelled like autumn–years of fallen leaves lay underfoot in most places–and of pine sap.

Woodpeckers rat-tat-tatted all around them, and Pacific wrens kept up their constant twittering, sounding like an audio tape played back at fifty times normal speed. A black-capped chickadee kept singing as if it were calling a little girl home: "Phoe-be! Phoe-be!" They disturbed a fat gray squirrel, which scurried up a maple tree, hung upside-down, and scolded them with its hoarse chattering bark, which Grunkle Stan once said sounded to him like "You big jerk! You big jerk!"

Sometimes they were in more open forest, and then the underbrush crowded in and Ford and Dr. Tremaine hacked a passage for them with machetes. A few times they crossed clearings–usually the site of lighting-started forest fires, Ford thought–and they could see the drone. They descended a ridge and had to cross a shallow, stone-bottomed, fast-running stream.

Ford and Tremaine's boots let them get across without trouble—the stream was literally only inches deep—but Dipper took off his sneakers, stuffed his socks in them, and tied the laces around his neck to wade across. The water felt ice-cold against his bare feet. Then on the other side, he had to pause to put his shoes back on, a slow process because Ford was holding the controller and couldn't resist fiddling with it and constantly asked for Dipper's help in keeping the drone aloft and level and in one spot.

After more than two hours and probably about six miles of hiking, Ford stopped so suddenly that Dipper nearly walked right into him. "I think this may be it," he said, his tone excited. "Hover mode, Dipper."

Dipper hastily made the adjustment. "Now turn about ten degrees to the left, slowly. A little more–Henry, does this look worth investigating to you?"

Dr. Tremaine peered near-sightedly at the screen. "By all means! See how the trees here are felled in a circular pattern? Quite reminiscent of the Tungaska Event in Siberia! I'd wager a month's salary that when we get close enough for a really good look we'll find a crater at the center of that circle of fallen trees!"

They paused to drink some water, but then hurried ahead, Dipper feeling a rising excitement.

Mystery from the stars!

A whole new field to investigate!

And when they had gone a mile farther, he was able to tilt the drone downward to peer at the center of the bullseye made by the circle of trees, and Ford said, "Yes!"

He showed Dipper a sight that looked like a telescopic view of a moon crater. It looked even more moon-like when the camera zoomed in close so the fallen trees didn't show up–only the circular, rimmed pit of what just had to be the place where the green meteor had struck the Earth.

* * *

 **From a three-page letter found in the files of Miskatonic University. A note stapled to it identifies the letter as one written by Franklyn Dannay of Haverhill, Mass., undated but assumed to be from the year 1924:**

 _Gentlemen, as an alumnus I write to plead for your help. You will know who I am because of the newspaper coverage._

 _I truly believe that something in the air inside that abominable fissure in the stone drove my wife and my son insane—corrupted their minds within hours, reducing them to lunatics, homicidal maniacs, too far gone to recognize me or each other. As I await death by electrocution for what the State terms my crimes, I write to you gentlemen at the University to beg you to seek out and destroy that miasmatic cavern before it claims more victims._

 _I have drawn, to the best of my limited ability, a sketch map of the area on the reverse side of this paper. The distances indicated are necessarily approximate, but the location, while practically unvisited, should not be difficult to spot from an aeroplane. The landmarks you must look for are a sudden stretch of grey bedrock, oval or nearly circular, easily one hundred yards in diameter. Seek a barren spot in the midst of the woodlands. The stony expanse forms a broad dome located in a bend of the Miskatonic River, and at its northernmost rim one stands perhaps fifteen feet above the level of the water below._

 _Mrs. Dannay and I had picnicked there frequently when we were courting, and last fall some vagrant whim provoked her to wish to revisit the site on the occasion of our boy's sixteenth birthday. We drove the family automobile to the little town of Edgerton, where we left it at a garage, and then walked for perhaps three miles across open country and through the woods to "Hangman's Dome," as the expanse of stone has been called by the locals since time out of memory, although to my knowledge no one ever was executed there._

 _Our son explored the area as we set out a blanket and unpacked our picnic basket. In shifting a large boulder—he meant to topple it over the edge of the bluff, just to see it splash into the river, as boys will do—Roger, our son, uncovered a rift or opening. At first concealed and seemingly filled by sand that had accumulated there and in which tough, coarse grass had rooted, it enlarged itself as the stone rolled across it and the soil and plants, now free of its support, crumbled and fell into the void like sand flowing from the top half of an hourglass._

 _With great excitement, Roger pronounced his willingness to explore the "pirate's cave," as he called it—from his earliest youth, he had been a devotee of swashbuckling adventures, as those penned by Stevenson, Ballantyne, and more recently Sabatini, tales of buccaneers, maroons, and desperate duels with sword and poignard. I cautioned him to hold back, but he dropped through the opening and shouted that it was an easy descent, that he could climb back at any time, and that an extensive, though low-ceilinged, cavern spread out before him._

 _My wife grew nervous, and we hastened to the spot where our son had vanished from sight. We lay face-down on the sun-heated stone and called into the opening for him; he responded that he could hear us perfectly well and that he was determined to explore the cavern as far as the light held out. However, he repeatedly coughed, as though having difficulty breathing. My wife begged me to go after him, but I could not fit through the narrow opening. Desperate to recover our son, she discovered that she could squeeze through, and over my great objections she followed him in._

 _The two of them were in the cavern for no more than ten minutes—less for my wife. Soon enough she herded Roger back, I reached down and gave him a lift, and then I helped her out as well. We had our picnic, but a pall had descended upon our family. Both Evelyn and Roger seemed to have been upset by their venture into the darkness below the earth. Evelyn seemed confused. For instance, saying she felt dizzy, she asked me to repack the suitcase, meaning the picnic hamper, and could not remember the word for the object and indeed fell into a disgruntled, growling kind of mutter, stringing together words that made no sense to me._

 _I—I cannot—I WILL not rehearse the story that I told in court: how before we had walked halfway back to our automobile Roger_ _too_ _began to lose the power of speech; how before my eyes he reverted to an eldritch, decadent kind of knuckle-walking, drooling, his eyes horribly transformed. With a supreme effort of will, and in understandable language, he cried out for help, but seemed immediately afterward to lose completely the power of speech, only gurgling and bubbling noises issuing from his writhing mouth._

 _His features altered, flesh flowing like melting wax into amorphous masses, and he snarled, spat, gibbered without words, stalked me like a beast—he actually attacked, flinging himself at me, and for self-preservation I made violent, unspeakable efforts against my boy, my own flesh and blood, not ending until he lay dead—and then my wife Evelyn, her body visibly transforming into a loathsome, lumpy parody of itself, viciously leapt upon me, her eyes terrifying and vacant, bulging, protruding far from her eyelids like burgeoning grey-green fungoid tumors, tumescent and translucent, her teeth bared, foam gargling from her dissolving lips as she bit me, ripping the flesh from my forearm—how I seized a rock and—_

 _No, no, I cannot write of that. The sensationalist press has reprinted my testimony in court. Read it there if you must._

 _Above all, find that accursed fissure in the stone! Something within the cavern into which it opens is deadly! Stuff it with dynamite! Blast it to oblivion, pour gallons of gasoline into the opening you reveal, and burn it, purify it with fire, I beg you—this is my final wish._

 _The Warden has promised me he will post this to you gentlemen at the University—the guard and a priest this moment stand at the door of my cell. If you have any pity for a doomed man, do as I have asked. When you receive this letter, you will have before you the final request of a man wrongly executed, but one who goes to his punishment willingly for what he_

 _(The letter breaks off in mid-sentence and is unsigned. It bears a label that identifies it as 'correspondence received 14 July 1924, addressed to Chairman, Department of Geology, Miskatonic University.' News records indicate that a man named Franklyn Andrew Dannay was executed in the electric chair of Charleston State Prison on 11 July, 1924_ _by the State of Massachusetts for the murders of his wife and son. The cavern mentioned in the letter has never again been located.)_


	7. Chapter 7

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 7**

"It's just on the other side of the next ridge," Ford said at last. They stood under the open, cloud-covered sky, and beyond them the drone slowly circled in a tight orbit around the splash of fresh dirt and debris it had spotted. However, getting to the suspected crater meant running an obstacle course. Dr. Tremaine, though younger than Ford, acted tired, leaning on the steel rod he had been using as a walking stick.

Two or three hundred trees had been shattered and blasted by the impact. Those on the fringes had shed branches and bark. Closer in, the trunks had been snapped off, from twenty feet up at first, then ten, and finally at the roots. The fallen trunks, stripped bare of branches, lay with the broken ends pointing toward the place where the meteorite had struck.

In a way, Dipper thought, that made their task a little easier–they could climb between parallel logs instead of clambering across them. But the footing on the ridge slope had become slippery with pulverized wood, sap, and loose soil. "We might as well retrieve the drone and leave it here," Tremaine said. "We'll send it up again as we start back."

So Dipper brought it in for a landing–a pretty soft one, though it did clip a fallen long and nearly flipped over. "Is it broken?" he asked anxiously.

"No, it's fine," Ford said. "I'm going to leave my pack here, too, except for a few things we'll have to have. Here, put the control panel into my backpack–it's waterproof, and it looks like the rain might start at any time."

"What are those?" Dipper asked as Ford took from the pack a device about the size of a four-cell flashlight and a couple of smaller attachments, which he tucked into his shirt pocket.

"The basic unit is a Geiger counter," Ford said. He unclipped a probe on a three-foot cable and demonstrated it. "It picks up radiation–nuclear, X-ray, even microwave–and warns us if the counts are too high. Right now it's showing normal background radiation for Gravity Falls. The device can also be a sniffer–that is, it detects and registers potentially harmful gases–if I plug the other probes in. We'll start with radiation, though, because that's the long-range threat. Let's go."

It was a miserable, steep climb, through broken wood, loose dirt, and tumbled rocks. They repeatedly slipped and had to struggle to make up the lost distance. Finally, though, they all reached the top of the ridge. "Stay down," Ford said. "I'll do a preliminary check."

The radiation counter ticked up just a notch–still well within the safety levels–and the gas detector didn't register anything out of the ordinary. "No unearthly elements, anyway," Ford said.

"None that you can detect," Tremaine warned.

"Let's take a look."

For Dipper it proved a disappointing moment. They crested the rise, looked down and saw . . . the bottom of a funnel-shaped hole, littered with stones, dirt, and fragments of trees. Evidently the meteorite had angled directly into the far side of the ridge, and now this part of the crest was, effectively, the northwestern rim of a new crater. "No meteorite?" he asked.

"It's probably buried," Tremaine pointed out. "The impact blasted soil pretty high into the air, and then it settled out again. And look–a lot of the debris also slipped down the crater walls, splinters of wood and particles of leaves and such. I'll go down with my soil probe and see if there's anything solid beneath the detritus."

Ford re-checked with his detector and found nothing to indicate danger. So Tremaine stepped toward the edge of the crater, as soil crumbled away and slipped downward under his weight. He had carried his four-foot metal rod the whole way, and to that point Dipper had supposed he had brought it just to use as a staff or cane. "Just a moment before you go any further," Ford said. He slipped and slid back down to his backpack and struggled back up with a coil of thin nylon rope. "This will hold your weight. Loop it around your waist and tie it, so if you need help climbing back up I can give you assistance."

"Good idea," Tremaine said. He looped the rope, but made a granny knot.

"Let me do that," Dipper said, re-tying it as a square knot. "That should hold."

"Thank you, lad. Well–wish me luck!"

The loose material on the inside wall of the crater cascaded as Tremaine made his way down, and Ford helped by keeping tension on the rope. Finally the professor from Arkham stood at the bottom of the cavity. "It's only about four feet across here," he called back. "Ground is quite soft underfoot. I'll probe toward the center." He leaned forward, thrust the end of the rod into the soil and wood fragments, and pushed down. It slipped easily until half its length was beneath the surface, then stopped. "I've hit something solid!" Tremaine announced. He tried probing in three other places. "It's at least a couple of feet in diameter, and about that distance beneath the surface. We should try to expose it."

"I'll come down," Ford called.

Dipper said, "No, wait! I couldn't pull either one of you back up again, and there's nothing to tie the rope to. Let me go down. If we get in trouble, you're strong enough to pull us both up."

"Well–that's reasonable," Ford said. "I hesitate to put such a burden on you, Dipper, but–"

"I'm volunteering," Dipper said. "Only what do we dig with?"

"Go down to our packs and look inside. Each one has a very small folding shovel. They may be inadequate to the task, but since the soil is loose, they just might serve. Expose the top of the meteorite if you can so we can photograph and test it. But don't spend much time! And clip the meter to your belt and put the gas detectors in your pocket. The moment you get a glimpse of the thing, do a full range of tests, understand?"

"Sure."

A few minutes later, Dipper struggled down the inner slope carrying both folding shovels–not much more than toys, really, only about eighteen inches long when fully opened–and trying to maintain his footing. "Welcome, lad," Tremaine said at the bottom. He'd poked about ten holes in the crater floor. "These pinpoint the mass, I think."

Kneeling, Dipper ran through the range of tests for radiation and dangerous gas. Nothing out of the ordinary. Tremaine said, "Very well, then. You tackle that side, I'll do this, and we'll meet in the middle." He thrust the pole into the earth off to the side so it would stand on its own, then began to shovel with the inefficient little tool that Dipper handed him.

Dipper joined in–frustrating work, because there was no good place to toss the shoveled-up dirt, and it wanted to leak right back down into the hole again. But after ten minutes or so they had revealed a small patch, about six inches around, of a rugged-looking, pitted, dark gray rock. Dipper took out the scanner again and, holding the probe close, reported the readings back to Ford: radiation slightly elevated but still well within safety margins, traces of silicon dioxide, ferrous oxide, and magnesium oxide gas–"Quite expected in meteorites," Tremaine said–along with water vapor, probably from the destroyed trees.

Taking his phone from a vest pocket, Dipper snapped a dozen photos as Tremaine pressed a thermometer against the surface near the rocky body. The meteorite was not cold, but not exceptionally hot–a direct measurement registered thirty degrees Fahrenheit above the air temperature, right around 110 degrees.

"I am relieved," Tremaine announced. "It has all the earmarks of an ordinary stony-iron meteorite. That is nothing to sneeze at, mind! Those are the least common type of meteorite, and I'm sure this one would be valuable to a museum."

As he put his phone back in his pocket, Dipper breathed easier, too. The things he'd read and heard had made him apprehensive that the thing might have brought some horrible disease with it, or one of the dire interdimensional creatures that seemed to plague Arkham, Massachusetts. "Do we need to dig the whole thing up?" he asked.

"No, no, with the tools at hand that would be beyond our ability and to no purpose," Tremaine said. "Even one of this relatively small size would be far too heavy for us to move. We will record the co-ordinates of the spot and Ford can arrange for a team from one of the nearby universities to come in and do the difficult work of recovery. I'm content to have been one of the discoverers of this unusual meteorite–and to have seen with my own eyes that it's just a meteorite, after all. The Earth is safe."

He used the steel rod to chip at the surface of the meteorite, but couldn't separate a fragment of any size. Again he said, "We'll call in a team for this. I will request that the eventual excavators supply me with a small sample for testing. Perhaps we had better go. It's beginning to rain."

More exactly, a thin cool drizzle, just barely heavier than a fog, had begun to drift down from the cloud cover, not enough to soak Dipper but sufficient to make him uncomfortably damp. Tremaine climbed up first–with a substantial assist from Ford, who nearly had to haul him up–and then Ford tossed the rope back for Dipper.

As he reached for it, he heard a hissing behind him.

Staring down into the small excavation he and Tremaine had made, Dipper saw a sheen of water steaming on the exposed surface of the meteorite. "It's hot enough to evaporate the rain," he called up to Ford. "I can see–"

With absolutely no warning, a billow of green gas burst from the meteorite–a few inches of the surface had exploded with a pop like that of a medium firecracker–and small fragments of rock struck Dipper's arm, stinging him. The iridescent green gas rolled over him.

"Don't breathe it!" Ford yelled. "Hang on!"

He dragged Dipper up the slope, hand over hand. When Ford pulled him up, Dipper's clothes were a wreck, his T-shirt muddy, his jeans ripped at the knees. Tremaine was holding the probe, pointing it downward. In the crater, the green gas began to dissipate. The dirt in the center of the crater floor dropped into the hollow space where the meteor had been. It seemed to have popped like a soap bubble.

"The gas looks a bit like chlorine, but it isn't that, thank God," Tremaine said, rising from where he had knelt, holding the probe and the detector that Dipper had brought back up with him. "The machine can't identify it."

"Dipper, are you all right?" Ford asked anxiously. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Six, of course!" Dipper took stock of his feelings. "I'm OK. I don't think I inhaled any of that stuff, or not much, anyway. Except for being wet and scratched up, I'm not hurt."

"I want to get my nephew to a doctor for evaluation," Ford said.

"Agreed," Tremaine told him. "You have the co-ordinates of the pit?"

"I've already sent them back to my computer," Ford said. "Let's go."

They made better time on the way back to the car, and Dipper again flew the drone. Ford kept fussing over him: "Do you feel weak? Light-headed? Drink some more water!"

But Dipper insisted he was fine. The drizzle had intensified, and all three of them felt wet and uncomfortable when they piled back into the car. Ford started the engine and drove too fast along the curving road back to Gravity Falls, where the new clinic had just opened and where he intended to have Dipper thoroughly examined.

Just in case.

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _The doctor who agreed to come and be the physician at the new Gravity Falls Clinic–which is actually in an old house that the late owner had willed to the city–is the same one I remember from last year, when Mabel had been bitten by a butterfly (long story, refer to Journal 1). His name is Dr. Jean le Fievre, and for a doctor, he's a young guy._

 _He checked me out and said he couldn't find anything wrong. Ford thanked him, and he said, "No, thank YOU! I've always wanted a small-town practice of my own, and this valley has such interesting people in it. Or an interesting sort of people!"_

 _So we drove back to the Shack and I took a really hot shower and then changed into dry clothes and Mabel, of course, came up to my room and made me tell her all about it. I had taken photos of the meteorite with my phone, and she looked at them and complained they didn't look impressive._

" _It came millions of miles through space!" I told her. "It doesn't have to look impressive–it IS impressive."_ _Sometimes she can be so . . . Mabelly!_

 _I really, really wanted to tell Wendy all about it, but she had to leave right after work. I'm upset with her. I have to say it. Just because her dad and her brothers act like they're helpless, I can't spend any time with her. I wish she'd stand up to them! She just lets them push her around._

 _Mabel wanted to print out the pictures, but I wouldn't let her. Ford may need the photos to prove that the meteor is really out there. And she didn't go along on the trip, anyway! She's just wanting to steal my stuff. She can be so bratty sometimes._

 _I'm sleepy. It's not even seven, but I think I'll lie down for a while._

 _I'll have to find a place to hide my phone. Mabel just takes anything she wants. You'd think a guy could trust his own sister._

 _My head aches a little. Too much hiking._


	8. Chapter 8

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 8**

Dipper woke sometime in the night, opening his eyes on darkness. He'd missed dinner, and he felt hungry. Rolling over on his side, he switched on the lamp beside his bed, meaning to check the time on his phone–but it wasn't where he always left it, plugged in and charging and ready to hand.

He jumped up, balling his fists and fiercely cursing–words that Ford wouldn't have guessed he even knew–Mabel! It was just like her! She'd come sneaking right in while he slept to steal his phone and his pictures–

He had already reached the top of the steps, determined to burst into her room and force her to return it, when he remembered that he'd hidden the phone. He went back to his bedroom and dug it out from behind a couple of books and checked the time: 2:12 in the morning. OK, so Mabel hadn't taken it, but that didn't mean she wouldn't have liked to! Dipper started to replace the phone in its hiding place and then thought better of it. He wanted to go find something to eat, and Mabel might be just waiting for him to leave the attic before sneaking in.

He started to tuck it under his mattress, but then he thought _Abuelita comes in here to clean and snoop around. If I didn't think to pick it up again and she found it, she'd give it to Soos, and Soos is so stupid he'd give it to Mabel if she asked for it! I can't trust him!_

So he got dressed, except for shoes, and kept the phone in his shorts pocket. Nobody could get it there. With his footfalls padded by socks, he went downstairs as quietly as he could manage, one slow step at a time, but the stairs still creaked when he put his weight on them. He grimaced.

Soos had _fixed_ the damn stairs! They had new treads and a sturdy new rail and looked solid, so why hadn't Soos taken care of the freakin' loose nails that made them squeak so loud? Anybody might be listening for him to come downstairs so they could go up and prowl through his stuff! It was probably even Soos's idea–make sure that everyone knew when Dipper was coming or going. Soos was dumb, but he could be sneaky.

But Dipper listened as he paused on each step, gripping the smooth new rail with his left hand, and no one stirred in the Shack–except for him. He silently raided the fridge and made a meal of a cold chicken leg and some left-over potato salad, washing it down with a cup of coffee he warmed over in the microwave and cut with milk.

Then very quietly he washed and dried and put away the dishes. He even wiped the table, smirking at his own cleverness. Nobody would be able to tell that he'd even been there. He'd never realized before how important it was to cover your tracks, always.

People were too nosy, that was the problem, always prying into your secrets. Jealous of your smarts, that's why! They pretended to be your friends, just looking for an opening to hurt you. And there was no such thing as privacy in the Mystery Shack! All the times Mabel just banged the door open and came running into his room–she'd have a screaming fit if he did that to her.

Then he thought about the Journals up in his room–five of them! Ford's first three, plus his own Journal 1 from the previous year, plus his Journal 2, with only a few pages filled so far. And every one of them was jammed full of secrets and private information!

Soos might find them. He wrote fanfiction! Posted it on the Internet! What if Soos stole the Journals and turned the secrets in them into his scribblings? Strangers would read Dipper's innermost thoughts, they'd know his hopes and his terrible doubts and his inward fears. Everyone laughing at him. They were all fools, not to be trusted! People would steal his ideas, all because of Soos! He had to do something–now!

Well, there was one place in the Shack that Mabel and Soos never visited–nor anyone else these days, except for Ford, and he came only occasionally. Dipper returned to his room, collected the five volumes, and took them downstairs, keeping close to the wall on the steps because that way they didn't squeak as loud.

Down in the gift shop, next to the "Staff Only" door, he punched in the code, the vending machine swiveled to reveal the hidden stairs, and Dipper took the books down to Ford's basement laboratory levels. _These_ stairs were in good repair–no squeaks. Ford had built this place, or he at least had supervised the building, and it was done right. Like Dipper, Ford was smart.

 _Maybe too smart_ , Dipper thought.

He pondered where to hide the books. Because of course Ford might find them, too! For some of the books it didn't matter all that much, because he had copies of the first three, Ford's own Journals with Dipper's and Mabel's notes added to a good many entries, and he also had photocopies of many of the pages in Dipper's first Journal, things about Dipper's investigations of the paranormal and some of his accomplishments in school. But there was a lot of other secret stuff in there, fantasies about Wendy, for example, that no one else had a right to know about.

Dipper could think of one corner of level two that Ford never disturbed or even visited any longer. He had piled into that niche a clutter, a jumble, of Bill Cipher memorabilia–dusty, folded Native American blankets with Cipher's likeness woven in, statuettes from ancient Egypt and Tsarist Russia and fifteenth-century China made in his triangular image, along with dozens of prints or paintings and engravings of Cipher. Some of them were ancient woodcuts taken from the tattered pages of books that dated back to the very dawn of printing.

At one time in his earlier life, Ford had been obsessed with Cipher, had even considered Cipher his Muse, had welcomed him into his mind, and with a characteristic Pines monomania had researched Cipher's appearances in folktales, legends, and primitive art all over the world. He'd amassed quite a Bill Cipher collection. But shortly before and certainly after the apocalyptic upheaval of Weirdmageddon, Ford had become thoroughly disillusioned and afraid of what Cipher could do, and he'd thrown all that stuff into the corner, no longer wanting to see it but not yet willing to part with it, and so he had pulled a canvas tarp over the pile. Now he seemed to have forgotten about it.

Dipper peeled back the canvas–the dust made his eyes runny and tickled his nose–and took some time to pull Cipher-related items out of place, with great care and quietly–though the basement levels were sound-proofed, you never could tell–until he revealed an old, battered, short bookshelf, looking home-made from pine boards, its three bowed shelves stuffed with bulging shoe boxes stuffed with old forgotten letters, binders full of yellowed class notes from Ford's college days, bills received and paid thirty-odd years ago.

Dipper knelt in front of the shelves, pushed the junk they held around a little to make room, and stuffed all five Journals in among the boxes and piles of paper, turning them sideways and stacking them page edge outward so they could not be identified by their spines, and then he reconstructed the pile of Bill Cipher junk that concealed the shelves and the things stacked on therm. He covered the pile over with the tarp and smiled in satisfaction. No one would be able to tell that he had disturbed anything, and this would be the last place Ford would look. Dipper couldn't help feeling smug about that.

Because how could he trust even Ford, really? Ford was a scientist–but he had a huge ego. He'd want to claim all the credit for discovering the meteorite, when Dipper was the one who first saw it ripping across the night skies. It was _his!_ Ford didn't have any right to it! He hadn't known about it until Dipper told him! And now probably that Tremaine guy would claim co-credit with the great Dr. Stanford Pines for the discovery of a rare meteorite! Just like Ford had written the article about Dipper's discovery of a carnivorous tree found only in Gravity Falls! Ford's name came first in the published article. How was _that_ fair? But they'd get away with it because they were adults and they had college degrees and nobody was ever fair to a teenager!

The more he thought about it, the more Dipper realized that everyone was against him. Everyone he knew was secretly his enemy. There was Wendy, running off and deserting him when her father snapped his fingers! And Mabel, who'd always been jealous of his brains and his accomplishments! And both of them had seen the meteorite, when he'd been the first one to notice it.

Both girls were probably boasting about it, blabbing to all their friends about how they knew about the blazing, streaking space rock before anyone else! And they'd try to fool him, just like Grunkle Stan, who'd tried to trick Dipper into thinking that Stan felt he was important, when really it was so clear that Stan loved Mabel and merely tolerated Dipper!

Well, he didn't need Stan, or any of them. He'd show them. He'd show them all.

Grimly, Dipper set about what he knew he had to do.

* * *

For all his resolve, once he had made all his preparations he just had to snatch a little more sleep. He'd intended to doze for only a couple of hours, but when he woke the sun was already up. Close to seven! With luck, he could still get away. He grabbed his backpack, much heavier than before, and again went downstairs as quietly as he could. He could hear Mabel's snores, so she wouldn't be in his way.

But his luck ended when he stepped outside. Wendy, in her running clothes, had just emerged from her car. She came striding across the lawn, grinning at him. "Hey, Dip! What's up, dude? You're not dressed out!"

"Hi," he said, hearing the surliness in his own voice. "Nothing's up. I'm just not running today. Something else to do."

She stopped in her tracks, still ten feet away, and gave him a side-tilted frown of puzzlement. "Huh? Why didn't you call, man? Maybe I can get Soos to let me come along and help you do whatever."

"I don't want your help!" Dipper snapped. "Go and help your daddy if you want to collect brownie points. I know how you talk about me behind my back!"

Wendy stepped back as if he'd slapped her across the face. "Huh? Dipper? What's wrong with you, man? What happened yesterday?"

"Nothing's wrong with me! And stop prying into what I did yesterday. Everybody's always sticking their nose into my business! Not this time. If you want to run, knock yourself out!" He hurried into the woods, not paying any heed when she stood calling his name.

He cut through the forest and came out on the shoulder of the highway. It was a long walk to the picnic area where Ford had parked the previous day, and then an even longer one to the crater. But he'd make it. He wouldn't even have to come back to the Shack anytime soon–he had his pup tent, his sleeping bag, and plenty of food. He'd claim the meteorite his own.

He grinned in fierce anticipation as he envisioned himself chipping at the shell of the thing with the rock hammer he'd tucked into the backpack. Maybe more of that green gas, and then the heart of the matter. He'd crack it wide open. And he'd release what lay waiting inside the cosmic egg at the center-

"Pine Tree!" Dipper stopped, confused. He spun around–but no one was there. "Inside your head, dummy!" the voice said. "What's up with you? I'm getting a seriously weird vibe!"

"Get out of my head, Cipher!" Dipper shouted.

"It was a figure of speech! I'm not really in it! But something's seriously wrong with that big brain of yours, buddy! I can feel it. You're only half here, and half in the Mindscape. That's why I can reach you. What's happened to you?"

"Shut up, shut up! Everybody's spying on me! Leave me alone!"

"Um, I spy on _everybody,_ Pine Tree! It's kinda my thing! I mean, I can even see into anywhere in the whole world from that design on your money! Come on, kid, you'd better get help and fast. Go ask Sixer–"

"You're in this with him!" Dipper yelled. "I can tell those government guys about you! How would you like that, huh?"

"Please, kid, the high-ups in the government practically worship me! But your blood pressure's wacked out, and your temperature's not normal. Don't work yourself into an aneurysm! Cool it, kid, and I'll let you alone. Sheesh!"

Feeling dizzy and disoriented, Dipper stood for a minute breathing hard. Then, clenching his jaw, he set off on the long slog to where the Old One lay imprisoned. The Old One would destroy his enemies. The Old One would protect him.

He started to laugh in a strange way, a disturbing way. A part of him heard it and tried to stop it, but he felt like a passenger in his own head–he had no control.

No control at all.

* * *

 **From the** _ **Flores Malorum**_ **of Zin-Harif (ca. early 15** **th** **century)** , **a bound manuscript copy in the rare book room of the Arkham University library. This handwritten English translation of Canto xvii was tucked inside the book (which is bound in leather made from human skin), believed to have been written around the year 1927 by the brilliant student Abidiah Wainscott, shortly before his abrupt, inexplicable descent into madness, his murderous rampage, and his violent and tragic death at the hands of the police** :

 _Men are blind. They seek to know all, yet know nothing._

 _The weak are stronger than the strong if they are ruthless._

 _The chains binding them are forged in their own minds._

 _Hark unto my words, my children! Slaves that will be Kings!_

 _Know these things I tell ye are true and will make ye as gods!_

 _The way to knowledge is through ignorance._

 _The way to domination is through submission._

 _The way to love is through hate._

 _The way to kindness is through cruelty._

 _The way to light is through darkness._

 _The way to life is through death._

 _These words are true, for they come to me._

 _They come in the night, from nowhere._

 _They come from minds ancient and terrible._

 _They sing in my soul when I am fired with hatred._

 _They make me rejoice when I despair._

 _Revenge is sweet, but annihilation is as wine!_

 _Thus sing the dark spirits in my mind._

 _So whisper the dark spirits in my soul._

 _I must surrender, for I know the truth:_

 _The way to sanity is through madness!_

 _-To Be Continued . . .._


	9. Chapter 9

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 9**

Mabel heard the sounds of almost hysterical crying and came running out of her room barefoot and still wearing her floppy-disk sleep shirt and pajama bottoms. "What's wrong?" she asked, hurrying down the short hall to the dining room and through it to the parlor.

Wendy Corduroy, dressed in a green sweatband, black tank top, red running shorts, and her running shoes, had collapsed on the sofa into Melody's arms and with her head down on the older woman's shoulder was sobbing as if her heart had been broken. Mabel's own heart climbed into her throat and pounded painfully. "Wendy? What's–where's Dipper? What's happened to Dipper?"

Wendy looked up, tears streaming over her freckled cheeks, and wailed, "I don't know! He hates me! What did I do? Mabel, did he say anything about me? What did I do?"

"No!" Mabel said. She got on the couch beside Wendy on the opposite side from Melody and hugged the redhead. "No way! What do you mean, he hates you? You know better than that! He's crazy over you. Where is he? I'll talk to him."

Wendy shook her head. Melody handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose. "I–I don't _know_. He came outa the Shack just as I drove up this morning, and he had, like, his backpack on and he said he was goin' off by himself to do something, he wouldn't tell me what. He walked into–into the woods an'–an' told me to go home to my dad, and he said that I was his enemy or something. He sounded so mad at me. I–oh, Mabel, what did I _do_?"

"You couldn't ever do _anything_ to make Dipper hate you!" Mabel insisted. "If he said that, he's just trying to protect you or something. I gotta get dressed. I'll call Grunkle Stan. He'll know what to do."

Soos came in, Little Soos in his arms, wearing only a diaper and a big goofy smile. Sounding unusually solicitous, Soos said, "Dude, Wendy, uh, look, you're way upset and all. Why'nt you take the day off?"

Wendy shook her head. "Thanks, but I'd have to go back home, and home's drivin' me nuts right now. I–I'll stay an' work, Soos. Keep my mind off things. I–I'm sorry for bein' such a crybaby." She sniffled. "I can hold it together, really. I'm sorry."

"Dude, don't be sorry and junk. You got lots of reason to cry," Soos said, standing over Wendy as Little Soos wriggled and gurgled and kept yelling something that sounded a little like _Wenwen_. Soos dropped his voice to a confidential whisper: "Wendy, you might not, like, realize it? But Dipper has this humongous crush on you. Uh, don't tell him I told you, OK?"

Despite her tears, Wendy actually smiled a little. "I'll keep it secret," she promised Soos.

Mabel dashed back to her room and phoned Stan. "What is it, Pumpkin?" he asked the moment he answered.

"Listen, Dipper's run away from home or something!" Mabel blurted. "Grunkle Stan, we've got to go and find him. He's acting cray-cray! And this time I mean that seriously!"

Stan growled, "Huh? Crazy? Different than usual, you mean? What's the knucklehead done now?"

Mabel waved her free arm for emphasis, even though Stan had no way of seeing her. "He ran away from home! I told you already! Went off into the woods an' he cursed at Wendy or something, said hateful things to her and made her cry!"

"What!" A long pause, and then Stan said, "This sounds bad. I'll roust up Ford an' we'll be over as soon as we can get there. Whatever happened must be real serious."

Mabel rushed through her shower and then dressed–dressed for outdoors, because she suspected that was where she'd be headed: heavy socks, thick khaki jeans, a long-sleeved linen shirt she'd bought and had never yet worn–she'd had vague plans to embroider it and was still waiting for inspiration. She tied her hair back into a pony tail and put on her sturdiest shoes.

When she came out of her room, she heard the vacuum cleaner droning and assumed it was Abuelita at work, but she found Wendy, now dressed in her green flannel shirt, jeans, and boots, in the museum, vacuuming the floor. Her eyes were red, her expression miserable. She switched off the machine when Mabel came in. "What's up, Mabes?" she asked, but without any of her usual good humor. "You don't hafta tell me, girl. Judgin' from what you have on, I think I already know."

"Yeah. Me an' our Grunkles are gonna go find Dipper and talk some sense into him an' bring him back home. Don't worry, Wendy. This is some big old stupid-head mistake, I know it is, and we'll straighten everything out."

"I dunno," Wendy sighed. "I got such rotten luck choosing boyfriends, Mabel. Been through so many an' broke up with them all, but I thought Dipper was the one, you know, the keeper? I dunno, maybe I been comin' on too strong to him or something. An' I _know_ I've been pesterin' him to change–gettin' him to do the running bit, gettin' him to go to dances and junk that he was never really interested in. He even started learnin' the guitar just because he had some crazy idea that I'd like it."

"Come on," Mabel said, hugging her again. "You're pulling him out of his dumb shell, that's all. Look, Wendy, all the way through school Dipper's had a hard time, a lot harder than me. I mean, I make friends easy, you know? Sure, some people at school think I'm weird and silly, but a lot more of them like to kid around with me and do things with me. Dipper, well, he's always been such a loner! He takes himself way too seriously and he over-thinks, like, _everything!_ And–never tell him I said this, but I think he's never really liked himself much."

"Dipper? He's one of the coolest guys I know!" Wendy said.

"Yeah, but see, _he_ doesn't think of himself like that. I don't know why, but he never ever believes he's good enough. Mom kinda gave up on me long ago, but she's always after Dipper to improve and be more responsible, and all, and maybe because she criticizes him all the time in little ways, he thinks he never measures up. He's never had confidence, anyway. And kids at school really always picked on him and bullied him. I think they called him dork and jerk and dweeb so often that he got to think of himself like that."

"Aw," Wendy said. "Dipper's a great guy! He has to know better!"

"I've tried and tried to tell him, but he doesn't believe me 'cause I'm his twin sister. You talked about getting him into running–Wendy, that's been so good for him! This last school year was the best one of his life! Man, he joined the track team, he won all those medals, he had somethin' to be really proud of! And that was all because of you! Wendy, trust me on this, you guys are perfect for each other. You make each other better!"

"Then why did he act like he hates me?" Wendy asked, tearing up again. "I can't help it that my dad acts like a tyrant an' bosses me around! Why did Dipper just, you know, lash out at me the way he did?"

"I don't _know._ Something must be wrong with him. All the bullying and stuff, his insecurities and all, he's frankly always been kinda paranoid. It gets a lot worse when he's really tired out or feeling bad. Maybe he's really sick."

"But he acted like it was all my fault–" Wendy broke off, gasped, and her eyes went vacant, losing all focus as she groped blindly before her with both hands, as if trying to take hold of something invisible to Mabel. Her knees bent, and she fell almost in slow motion, her knees hitting the floor before she toppled sideways. Mabel jumped forward and tried to catch her, but the gangly redhead was too heavy, and the most Mabel could do was ease her fall so she didn't bang her head.

"Help!" Mabel yelled at the top of her voice.

Melody hurried in, knelt down next to the unconscious, sprawling teenager, and said, "I think she's just fainted. Get some water, Mabel. And a wet washcloth."

Mabel ran for the things and brought back a glass of cold water and one of Baby Soos's tiny blue washcloths–it had been folded on the shelf next to the changing table and was the first one she saw. She'd soaked it under the tap.

Melody sprinkled some of the water in Wendy's face and patted her forehead and cheeks with the cloth, crooning, "Wendy, dear, wake up."

Wendy's green eyes flew open like twin umbrellas going _swock_! She started to struggle.

"Lie still for just a minute," Melody urged, holding onto her arm. "You had a little fall."

"No! Dipper's in trouble!" Wendy yelled, trying to fight her way out of Melody's grip. "Let go of me, let me get up. I've got to find Dipper! He's in trouble!"

* * *

Stanley, Stanford, and Dr. Tremaine arrived a few minutes later–Ford and their visitor both dressed for hiking in khakis and boots. However, Stan wore slacks, a blue Hawaiian shirt picturing pineapples and firecrackers, and his regular shoes. "If I can walk downtown in this outfit, I can walk in the woods!" he was insisting as they came into the Shack. "What, the possums are gonna complain it's too garish? The Gnomes have fashion police?"

"It's the _practical_ aspect I'm worried about," Ford said. "We'll have to walk a long way through some pretty rough—Mabel! Tell us exactly what happened."

She did, hurriedly. "I don't think Wendy ought to come, though," she added. "She practically collapsed a couple minutes ago! I've never seen her like this–I mean, she's always the strong one, what did you say, Grunkle Ford? 'Cool in the face of danger?' Right now she's a total wreck!"

"I'll go talk to her," Ford said.

When he had left the room, Stan said to Mabel, "OK, here's the deal: Poindexter's sure Dipper's gonna make for the crater they discovered yesterday morning. Professor Tremaine here says that he's doped out what's happenin'."

"Well," Tremaine said in a nervous way, "I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm certain. But this sounds very much like the M'nika-tzi Summoning mentioned in a book called the _Necronomicon._ The human victim's will is overpowered by forces alien to him. His self-control goes first, his ability to keep down his hidden fears and desires, and he loses the ability to control his emotions. Then gradually he becomes a virtual automaton–a robotic creature, I mean, no longer himself, with no will of his own. The M'nika-tzi inside him has taken over his mind."

"The what what in the which now?" Mabel asked.

 _"_ There is an alien creature inside your brother's body," Tremaine explained. "It's a form of parasitic life that young Mason most probably picked up from spores breathed in when the main body of the meteorite burst–they came out in what looked like a green cloud, and the progression of his disorder is typically rapid. It's distressing, but I've been doing research–"

"An' we're real glad you have," Stan said, sounding exasperated. "But the point is, there's a way to drive the parasite outa his body, right?"

"Oh, yes. If we can find him before the creature makes its way from his respiratory and digestive system into his nervous system and brain. However, if it consumes his brain–"

"What?" Mabel yelled. "Oh, my gosh, let's go! We have to get to him!"

Ford came back. "Wendy agrees she's too upset to accompany us. She's afraid her presence might only make things worse. But she's terribly anxious, so I've told her that if we find Dipper, I'm going to call her and she'll try to talk some sense into him over the phone. Everyone ready?"

"Wait, wait!" Mabel ran to her room and came back with her grappling hook. "Let's go save my brother!"

She launched herself into the back seat of the Stanleymobile before the others had even reached the car. Professor Tremaine climbed in on the opposite side, Stan slipped beneath the wheel, and Ford got into the front passenger seat ahead of Mabel.

"Which way?" Stan asked.

"Turn right at the foot of the driveway and head up into the hills," Ford said.

"But there's nothin' up there!"

"We're heading for the Twin Falls Overlook."

"Them cheesy picnic tables the county set up three-four years ago? What's there? That where the meteor hit?"

"No," Tremaine said. "It's where we'll park. From there it's a hike of about six or seven miles through the woods to the crater."

"Oy!" Stan groaned as he made the turn.

"Stanley," Ford said, "it may not come to that. With any luck at all we'll catch Dipper walking along the highway long before we get to the picnic area. He left on foot less than forty minutes ago, and it's a good four and a half or five miles to the overlook."

"But if he's walkin', he wouldn't have to go by the highway!"

"There's no direct route through the woods," Ford said. "He couldn't get across the river when he came to it unless he backtracked to the highway bridge. And the highway bridge is only half a mile or less from the picnic area."

"OK, got it. Hang onto your dentures!"

Mabel hung onto the seat instead, with one arm braced against the back of Ford's seat, as the El Diablo careened wildly around the sharp curves, the tires sometimes screaming. She paid no attention to the trees flashing past on her right, but stared anxiously ahead, hoping for a sight of Dipper's pine-tree hat or his vest.

Then she noticed that next to her, Professor Tremaine had taken from a case something that looked very much like a long-barreled chrome-plated pistol. "What are you gonna do with that?" she asked.

Tremaine looked troubled. "Don't be upset, Miss Pines, but I am going to try," he said, "to shoot your brother."

 _-To Be Continued . . .._


	10. Chapter 10

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 10**

They crossed a couple of bridges over small streams, and Mabel noticed the creeks were overflowing their banks, rain-swollen and colored a deep brown, with swirling branches and even logs rushing along.

"Must have rained hard up this way last night," Ford said. "That means Dipper can't just cut across country. He'll have to take the river bridge."

"Yeah, we're close to it now," Stan said. "There it is ahead."

The Kinzing Prichette Bridge was a modest concrete span, only about fifty feet long, but its central arch rose thirty or forty feet above the river surface in the gorge below. They could see the bridge, then lost sight of it again as they went around a curve and then Mabel could see it again and looked hard–but no Dipper.

However, just this side of the bridge, a logging truck pulled off on the narrow shoulder of the road. The driver, a burly, black-bearded man in stained green coveralls, was working beside the load, evidently re-fastening some heavy chains around the logs. Stan braked beside him, and Ford leaned out and said, "Excuse me, have you seen a teen-aged boy with a backpack and a blue-and-white cap?"

"Huh?" the big guy said. "Oh, yeah, picked him up a ways back. Said he's goin' campin'. I hadda stop to fix this chain, an' he hopped out an' went on. I was gonna go all the way up and let him out at the overlook, it was on my way anyhow, 'cause I sell firewood at my place 'cross the way in the Loop, but he—"

"How long ago?" Stan called across Ford.

The man rubbed his nose with the back of a gloved finger. "Didn't look at my watch. Fifteen, twenty minutes, I'd guess."

"Thanks!" Ford called, but Stan stamped on the gas, the El Diablo leaped forward, and the truck driver probably didn't even hear him. A minute or two later, Stan pulled off at the picnic area, and they all piled out.

"Let's go!" Stan said. "He can't be far ahead of us now. Let's find him!"

Ford used a handheld GPS device to navigate. They hurried along, trotting when the forest was open enough, practically running on the downslopes. Tremaine dropped back to the rear, with Ford in the lead, Stan right behind him, and then Mabel. "When we spot him, don't call out," Ford warned over his shoulder. "In his condition, Dipper would only run from us. We have to get close to him without his realizing it, and before he arrives at the crater!"

Mabel got winded before long. Stan silently picked her up and carried her, just as if she were twelve again. Ford found the places where they'd slashed through thickets and they followed the trail that Tremaine and Ford had blazed the day before.

"His backpack!" Ford said. It had been dropped beside the path they were taking.

Ford stooped to pick it up, but Stan said, "Leave it! We'll get it on the way back!"

They increased their speed, with poor Dr. Tremaine huffing and wheezing many steps back in the rear.

As fast as they traveled, when they got to the summit of the next ridge over from the crater, they saw Dipper ahead of them, down in the hollow, about to start the climb up. Yesterday's rain had long since ended, but the pulverized earth and wood was still wet, and it looked as if he slid back three feet for every two feet he climbed. Stan set Mabel down as they caught their breaths for the last rush.

They no longer tried to be particularly quiet, though they didn't talk. Dipper didn't seem to hear them. Except for the whisk of leaves against them and the squelch of soaked earth underfoot, the four hurried down in a kind of fearful silence, then with difficulty walked through clinging black mud–in rainy times the bottom of the hollow became swampy–and finally came to stand at the foot of the ridge.

Dipper was already twenty feet above them, with fifteen left to go, but he was obviously struggling to make that last distance. Tremaine stepped forward, knelt in the mud, held up his shiny pistol in his right hand, his left hand cupping the butt below, took aim–

"Don't!" Mabel yelled, jumping to try to knock the gun aside.

Everything happened in slow motion. Still in the air, she looked up at Dipper. He had to have heard her yell. Dipper's head whipped around, the gun went _thwack!_ and a red blossom of blood bloomed high on the back of Dipper's thigh.

Mabel hit, skidded, fell on her butt, and then got back to her feet, her gaze still locked on Dipper, who'd slipped down a couple of feet. He cursed in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, then clambered desperately upward. Mabel followed, trying to reach her brother–but as Dipper reached the rim of the crater, he pitched forward convulsively, then collapsed on his stomach, sprawling. He twitched and his arms and legs jerked and he looked as if he might be dying.

Stan and Ford were climbing beside Mabel, with difficulty, trying to reach him. Mabel scrambled up between them, slipping, half falling, not caring that her clothes were caking with sticky mud or that dagger-sharp splinters stabbed her palms.

Ford reached Dipper first, then Stan. Mabel came panting up. Her voice came out edged with fear: "Is he all right? Is he dying?

"He's in the grip of a severe allergic reaction," Ford said. "It's hard on him, but if it works, it'll be harder on the parasite."

Dipper's swollen face had broken out in a splash of raised, angry red patches, looking like a map of islands. He gasped, choked inarticulately, and began to retch. Mabel reached for him, but Tremaine, there at last, pulled her back. "Not yet! His body is struggling to reject foreign substances!"

Then Dipper's whole frame lurched and thrashed with a horrible uncontrolled spasm, and he curled his back, his head arching back toward his spine, and he vomited–

No, some slow, horrible _thing_ flowed from his mouth, gelatinous yellow slime drooling out with it, a living thing, squirming, dark green, its squamous skin glistening sickly, a few stiff yellow slime-stringed bristles sprouting from its back.

It was most like a horribly overgrown caterpillar, a foot long, without visible sense organs: a squishy, mucous-covered pulsating green tube, warty and alien. It squirmed and writhed on the very lip of the crater, dirt and wood chips clinging to it, and then shiny, many-jointed black legs, nine of them, shot from its surface and unfolded like a gigantic spider's legs, and it rose on them and began to scuttle downward, trying to reach the hole in the bottom of the crater where the remnants of the meteorite waited.

"Give Tremaine your disruptor!" Ford barked to Stan. "He's the best shot! Get the kids down–you're the only one strong enough. Here, take it. This is for Dipper! Give it to him ASAP! If we don't come back, for God's sake, get the kids home!"

For once, Stan didn't argue. He yanked a pistol version of Ford's quantum destabilizer from his belt and tossed it to Tremaine. Ford already held one. Stan barked, "Come on, Mabel!" As Tremaine and Ford leaped over the top like soldiers in a World War I movie, Stan grabbed Dipper and half fell, half slid down the muddy slope of the ridge. Mabel followed him, slipping and skidding.

The hollow between the ridges lay deep in the dark clinging mud, so Stan hauled Dipper over to the far side, where broad shaggy hummocks of tall, bright-green grass grew, and lay him down on one of those. He took out the thing Ford had handed him–a self-contained epinephrine injector–and Stan loosened Dipper's belt and yanked his jeans and underwear down.

Mabel heard something tear free of the cloth and saw a fat, two-inch long dart had fallen. It had a cluster of plastic "feathers" and a wicked tip like a large-gauge hypodermic needle. She realized with a shock that Tremaine had shot not a bullet but the dart into the top of Dipper's left thigh–he'd probably aimed for his butt, but her yell might have made him miss.

Stan tugged the protective caps off the epinephrine pen and plunged the injector against Dipper's bared buttock. Dipper jerked and twitched, but Stan held the injector in place for ten seconds or more. "That should fix him up," he said. "Don't look, I gotta get him dressed again."

"I don't mind seein' his butt if it's in one piece!" Mabel said fiercely. She crawled onto the hummock of grass and while Stan pulled Dipper's jeans up and fastened his belt, she cradled her twin's head in her lap. "You're OK now," she said, stroking his hair. "We–we'll get you back to the Shack, and, and . . . . You're gonna be OK!"

Woozily, Dipper opened his eyes and whispered, "Mabel? How'd you get way up here?" He sounded dazed but surprised.

Something behind Mabel crackled and buzzed, Ford yelled something and then a second sharp sound and buzz, and then the whole world shook beneath them.

"Whoa!" Stan yelled.

An explosion had erupted in the crater, not a loud one, but one that rushed the air with a deep kind of _foom!_ It sent a shock wave that nearly pushed Mabel over, but she bent against it, her arms around Dipper's head, protecting him.

A heartbeat later, a column of brilliant flaring white-green light leaped up, separated itself from the crater, and shot straight into the sky, diminishing to a mere spark–and then it just kept going up until it vanished. "Ford!" Stan yelled. "Ya OK?"

Nothing but silence.

Stan headed back to the ridge. "No!" Mabel yelled, reaching up and grabbing his hand. "Grunkle Ford said to get back to the car!"

Without looking back, Stan jerked free and growled, "Would you leave Dipper?"

"Mabel?" Dipper asked weakly. "Why's Stan here? I–I have to go help Dr. Tremaine. He's going to examine the meteorite. There's no place for Ford to tie the rope. . .." he frowned, his red, swollen face making him look like a caricature of himself.

"It's OK," Mabel cooed, stroking his forehead. She fought to hold back her tears. "I'll tell you all about it later."

She watched Stan repeat the hard climb. He got to the rim, stood on it, and yelled, "Are you two lamebrains all right?"

And Ford's voice– _Ford's voice!_ –came faintly from inside the crater: "We're not hurt, but we can't make that climb without a rope! We'll see if we can get up this low side here, and then we'll cut around the base of the crater rim to you. How is Mason?"

"Dipper's gonna be OK, I think," Stan called back. "Get your asses outa that hole an' we'll take him to the clinic!"

"What?" Dipper said. "What did you say?"

"Grunkle Stan said–"

"Not him," Dipper murmured. "I heard Wendy calling me. So plain. I . . . heard . . . Wendy."

His eyes crossed and closed, and he smiled in a way that broke Mabel's heart.

And then he lost consciousness.


	11. Chapter 11

**Beneath the Stars**

 **Chapter 11**

Dipper's facial rash faded some and he breathed much more easily after Stan carried him back to the Stanleymobile. He put the muddy, unconscious Dipper in the back seat, where he lay on his side–"Eh, upholstery can be cleaned"–and he, Ford, and Tremaine crowded into the front.

Mabel had her phone out and as she slipped uneasily into the back seat next to her brother–she was just as muddy as Dipper–she hit the speed-dial for Wendy. "Mabes!" the redhead said urgently, "Is–"

"He's OK," Mabel said.

Mabel felt the redhead's relief in her voice: "Oh, thank God! Can I talk to him?"

"Not yet," Mabel said, fastening her seatbelt and raising Dipper's head while she shoulder-held the phone. "He's kinda out of it, but he's gonna be all right."

Gasping, sounding as if she were about to sob, Wendy asked, "You sure, now?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. We'll bring him back to you, Wendy. Don't worry."

As the El Diablo wove its way mostly downhill along the winding road, Mabel sat cradling Dipper's head in her lap until, halfway to the Shack, he opened his eyes and in a weak voice asked, "Where–where are we? What's going on?" He straightened up in the seat, unsteady at first, and fumbled until he'd fastened his seat belt.

"Welcome back to the land of the livin', kid!" Stan called over his shoulder.

"What happened?" Dipper asked, his head bobbing as though he were dizzy.

"You got zapped by some horrible buggy alien thingy!" Mabel told him. "Now we're taking you to the doctor to get checked."

Dipper squirmed. "Ouch! My butt really hurts."

"It's nothing," Mabel told him. "You just had a couple of shots, that's all. One of them from a gun!"

"Huh. Where's Wendy?" Dipper asked, as if the notion of being shot by a gun didn't even faze him.

"Waiting for you at the Shack," Mabel said. "I called an' told her you're OK. But, Dipper, you've got some apologizing to do. I'll tell you about it later. Your memory seems all _wacka-wacka cuckoo!_ Tell me what you _do_ remember."

"Um. Well, uh . . .." Dipper rambled for a few moments, but both Mabel and Grunkle Ford both soon realized he didn't really remember anything after his first climb down into the crater. Not the rain, not the explosion of green, not the struggle to climb back up or the car trip back to town, not even his first doctor's visit. Certainly not his hot exchange of words with Wendy that morning. Mabel didn't really know how much to tell him.

Stan bypassed the Shack and drove straight to the clinic, where Dr. Le Fievre took one look at Dipper and immediately hurried him into an examining room, leaving his current patient, old Mrs. Fritchler, sitting on the edge of an examining table in the room he had come from, clutching her purse, and complaining to nobody until a nurse Mabel didn't know came in to take her vital signs and her complaints about feeling all moogly, whatever that was.

In the waiting room, Ford and Stan paced, tracking up the white-and-gray checkered linoleum, but Tremaine, embarrassed by his muddy state, remained out on the porch, sitting slumped forward on an old rattan chair. Mabel, too, was a mess–linen shirt probably ruined, jeans ripped in the knees and split in the seat, palms bloody from splinters–but she couldn't sit down, couldn't rest.

She stayed on the porch with Dr. Tremaine, alternately pacing and standing on tiptoe to peer in through the window in the front door, catching glimpses of the nervously-walking Ford and Stan. After twenty unending minutes, she exclaimed, "There's the doctor!" and ran inside.

The young physician had his hand on Dipper's shoulder. Dipper still looked a little wobbly on his legs. "I think he's going to be OK," he said. "The urticaria is resolving."

"Urtiwhattia?" Stan asked.

"Hives," the doctor said. "That blotchy red rash. Symptom of a severe allergic reaction, very close to anaphylactic shock, I'd say. It's lucky you had an epinephrine pen handy. I've prescribed a strong antihistamine. Have him take a dose as soon as you pick it up, then another before bedtime tonight. It'll probably make him sleepy. Keep an eye on him for any sign of respiratory distress, and call my emergency number–here's a card–if that develops. I don't think it's at all likely. He should be fine by tomorrow morning. Who's Wendy?"

"His girlfriend," Mabel said immediately, as Dipper grinned foolishly and blushed.

"He really wants to see her. Might be the best medicine. Wait a minute, young lady. Let me look at your hands. You're Mabel, right?"

"That's me!"

"Mm, yes, I remember you from last year. Well, Mabel, these are spectacularly nasty splinters. And they're also filthy with mud, which is not a good combination. Have you had a tetanus shot recently? No? We'll take care of that. Come on, we're going to clean you up, yank the rest of those splinters out, and disinfect the wounds."

"Is it gonna hurt?"

"It will be excruciating," the doctor said, but he was smiling.

"Mabel can take it! Bring it on!" Mabel said, following him out. "So, Doc, are you single or do you already have a girlfriend or what?"

* * *

Their first stop after the clinic was the drive-through window at the pharmacy, where they picked up the prescription–and a bottle of water, because Stan insisted on Dipper's swallowing one of the capsules immediately. Then despite Dipper's urgent requests to go back home–to the Shack, he meant–they stopped at the McGucket house first so the adults could clean up and change clothes.

Mabel and Dipper washed as much of the spattered mud off their faces, arms, and hands as they could, but they couldn't do much about their grimy clothes or their gunk-matted hair. Then Stan drove them to the Shack.

"What happened to my backpack?" Dipper suddenly asked.

"I'll buy ya another one!" Stan snapped from the driver's seat. "We ain't goin' back to look for it!"

"Actually, I picked it up," Tremaine said. "I have it here, in the floor under my feet."

"Thanks," Dipper said. "I wouldn't want to lose the pup tent that Wendy gave me–wait, I didn't pack the tent, did I? Why do I remember packing a tent?"

"'Cause you've lost like a day and a night, Brobro," Mabel said, touching him gently on the arm with her bandaged left hand. "Stuff from yesterday and today is all jimbly-jumblied up in your head right now. But listen, I have to tell you something real important."

And Dipper's expression melted into shock and horror when Mabel told him he had cursed Wendy, had ordered her to go home, and had turned his back on her. He writhed as Mabel spoke of how hard Wendy had cried. "I did that?" he asked miserably. "She must hate me!"

"I don't think she does," Mabel said. "When you were gone, she missed you so bad she passed out."

Dipper's mouth fell open. "You're kidding!"

"Nope. She turned all pale, her eyes went funny, and she just sort of folded up like one of those carpenter's rulers. She fainted and was out for like three or four minutes, and when she woke up, she kept asking where you were."

"She fainted? _Wendy_?"

"Hey, Dip," Stan said as he turned into the driveway, "don't get a big head. I've made a few ladies faint in my day!"

"Yes," Ford said. "I recall that one blind date in high school. The young lady passed out the very second she laid eyes on you."

"Yeah, I was pretty stunnin' in those days," Stan agreed amiably as he parked the Stanleymobile. A tour bus and several cars already stood in the lot.

"Oh, my gosh," Mabel said. "How are we gonna get in? Dip an' me are both covered with dirt, and I just realized I've got a great big rip in the seat of my jeans!"

"We'll go 'round to the back door," Stan said. "Then your room's just down the hall, Dipper's is just up the stairs. None of the tourists will see you, so no sweat."

Dipper seemed to be slowly emerging from his daze. "Mabel! What happened to your hands?"

Mabel held up her palms and fingers to display their bloody bandages. "I got snagged on some sharp splinters, Broseph! Long jaggedy ones, lots worse than the ones I got up in the attic."

"I'm so sorry I caused all this," Dipper said miserably.

"You couldn't help it, my boy," Tremaine said. "I will tell you what I believe happened to you and why you weren't in control. But first you'll want to go and clean up and change your clothes."

They saw Soos in the distance, driving the tram toward the Shack–a tour was coming to an end–and they hurried around back. Stan guarded the doorway into the gift shop while Dipper and Mabel headed to their rooms.

But Wendy had seen Stan, and she abandoned her post and came over. "Stan, where's Dipper?"

"Upstairs," Stan said. "He's gotta–"

She grabbed his lapels. "You hafta take the register, Stan! I'm gonna go see him!"

"He's prob'ly not decent!"

"You think I care?" She pushed past him and took the stairs up two at a time.

Dipper had already stripped to his briefs when she banged into the attic bedroom. "Dipper!"

They were in each other's arms in a heartbeat. "I'm so sorry," Dipper kept moaning.

She was caressing his head, her face buried against his neck, her breath warm and moist on his bare shoulder. "I was so scared," she said. "I've never been so scared in my life. You got dirt in your hair, dude."

Dipper stammered, "Ma-Mabel says I was awful to you."

She sniffled. "Yeah, you kinda were, but I don't think you knew what you were doin'." Her hand glided down his neck and onto his bare upper back, warm on his skin.

Dipper shivered a little. "I _didn't_ know. I don't remember any of it. But she said I cursed at you and–and—oh, Wendy, I'm so sorry."

"It's all right now." She pushed away from him. "Well. This is more'n I usually see of you, man! 'Cept at the pool." She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. "OK, I know you're not dyin', I'll give you some privacy. But I want to talk to you soon as I'm off work!"

Dipper asked, "Will you be able to hang around after work? What about your dad?"

"Hell with my dad!" she snapped. Then she looked regretful and bit her lip. "I mean, I can handle my dad."

"No," Dipper said. "I don't want you to get in trouble again because of me. Talk tomorrow morning? Uh–during our–our run?"

She hesitated, but then said, "OK, man. It's a date." She turned in the doorway and looked him over from head to toe, pausing in the middle. "That's nice. I notice that you're real happy to see me, too, dude," she said with a grin, raising a mischievous eyebrow before stepping out and closing the door.

Dipper sighed. _She noticed._ _I didn't even have a chance to cross my legs!_

* * *

Mabel and Dipper both showered and washed their hair. Mabel came upstairs just to make sure Dipper was OK—he was still moving slowly and was just getting dressed, but he said he felt all right. Then Stan came up and asked, "Are ya decent? Good. Poindexter an' his visitor want to talk with you. I gotta go help in the gift shop. It's crazy down in there!"

As chattering, laughing tourists bustled in and out of the museum and gift shop, Ford, Tremaine, and Mabel all settled in the attic–the one fairly quiet place in the whole Shack–and Ford and Tremaine sat in the two chairs and explained to Dipper what had happened, with Mabel chiming in a little now and again. He kept shaking his head. He couldn't recall any of it, from the time he first started down into the crater.

He perched on the edge of his unmade bed, feeling sort of out of it from the drug, and Mabel sat next to him. She'd exchanged the gauze bandages for cartoony Band-Aids—about half a box of them—and she kept gasping at the story the men told.

"The green cloud that erupted from the object," Tremaine said carefully, "bore the spores of a M'nika-tzi, also called the Servant Who Opens the Way. However the true horror, the dread being, the Great Old One, lay dormant in the heart of the meteor. In order for that abomination to emerge, you would have had to stand over the meteorite and recite the Summoning Spell in the ancient language of _Gru'rrn-hrrk_. The human vocal apparatus cannot normally shape the sounds, but with the M'nika-tzi, the parasite, taking over your brain, you would have managed. Except you would no longer have been you."

"The alien creature would have spoken _through_ you," Ford explained. "However, human and alien physiology are vastly different, and our biologies are fundamentally incompatible. Once the parasite had seized complete control of your nervous system, once it had tendrils threaded throughout your brain, your body would have died within two minutes, and so would the parasite–but there would have been time for you, or the being formed by the merger of the two of you, to perform the chant and set the monster free."

"And–and what would have happened then?" Dipper asked.

Tremaine looked grave. "Please understand that, properly speaking, the Old One was not physically present in the meteorite at all. Only his, or its, essence, as it were, rested, um, call it sleeping there. That's not really true, for the creature itself exists in a wholly different, well, let's say plane of reality–"

"You mean," Dipper said slowly, "I would have opened a rift into the monster's realm, and he could come through it into our world?"

Tremaine's shaggy gray eyebrows rose in surprise. "Exactly! That is a very succinct way of putting it. You are an extremely perceptive young man."

"So that was why we hit you with a powerful allergen," Ford said. "I knew enough about your medical history to realize that a concentration of–well, never mind what it was, but it's the reason you break out so badly when you eat certain kinds of seafood. Anyway, I was sure it would cause a serious allergic condition. We thought–we hoped, we prayed–that your body's natural reaction against the histamine would be strong enough to cause your system to fight anything foreign within it and to reject the parasite. Fortunately, it did."

"You should've seen it," Mabel said, wriggling her fingers. "Squishy and green and all warty and covered with yucky gooey yellow slime!"

"You usually think things like that are adorable," Dipper said in a shaky voice.

"Not when my brother pukes them up, I don't! And then it sprouted legs, like a great big insect's!" She held her hands a foot apart. "I mean this thing was yay long, Dipper, like imagine a cucumber that big, but soft, squishy, slimy, all bulgy and squooshy and _moving_! An' it started to scramble down into the crater, an' Grunkle Stan grabbed you, and we all ran like he–heck!"

"Meanwhile," Ford said, "Henry got a clear shot at the parasite just as it tried to climb down into the cavity where the remnant of the meteorite lay. He not only hit it cleanly and disintegrated it, but the ray blasted a lot of the soil away, and when the smoke cleared, we could see the very heart of the meteorite lay there, pulsating with green light."

"So we teamed up," Henry said. "We went far enough into the crater to be sure we could not possibly miss, we separated so we were attacking from different angles, took careful aim, and we both fired at once."

Ford resumed: "The quantum disruptor rays struck with full force. With a tremendous flash of light, the meteorite transformed instantly into some unknown kind of energy. It momentarily blinded us, but Mabel says it shot straight up into the air and vanished. Now, Henry, I can't tell you too much, but I have friends in the intelligence business, and I made a few calls. This is strictly confidential."

"I understand," Tremaine said.

"Us, too," Mabel told Ford.

Ford nodded. "Well, then, NASA tracked something hurtling away from Earth at immense speed– _they_ think it was a small asteroid that had nearly hit the Earth, but instead had gone round in a tight slingshot hyperbolic orbit, picking up velocity. It's headed into deep space, at a sharp angle away from the planetary ecliptic, and it even seems to be gaining speed. Its path means it can't return to the Earth's neighborhood ever. The observers think that the apparent acceleration may be an illusion, a malfunction of their instruments, but indications are that it's already at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light."

Tremaine nodded. "That is not impossible for these things. It may well exceed the speed of light before long! Creatures and elements of that realm do not obey the physical rules of our time and space. It is returning. Going back to the cold darkness between the stars where the walls of Reality are thin. Well. Earth is reprieved, at any rate."

"Betcha nothing like this ever happened to you before!" Mabel said.

Tremaine looked thoughtful. "Oh, it has, it has," he murmured. "Let me see. Four, five, six–this is the seventh time, in fact."

Mabel looked disappointed. "Aw. I thought stuff like that only ever happened in Gravity Falls!"

Ford said that he and Tremaine had seen enough of the gaping hole they had blown in the floor of the crater to know the meteorite had completely vanished. "So," he said as the professor and he both rose to leave, "we lose a valuable meteorite–but we gain a future for the Earth and all its inhabitants. I'd say that was a fair trade."

Dipper and Mabel talked for a good while after the two men had left. By then late afternoon had come. Finally, they went downstairs, and Dipper said goodbye to Wendy as she left at six. Mabel told him that she had their Summerween costumes ready, but he wouldn't see his until Saturday morning. He ate well, went to bed early, and lay awake for a long time, just thinking.

He should have been happy, but the more he thought, the worse he felt.

Mabel refused to go to her room, but slept in her old bed. "The doctor said to watch over you," she reminded Dipper as she tossed her pillow and blanket onto the other bed in the attic. "Now take your pill and go to sleep."

He did take the pill, and he didn't have any further allergic distress, but that was a long night, full of falling asleep and waking up again an hour later, and then repeating the cycle. Every time he woke up, he heard Mabel's gentle snoring.

It failed to offer him much comfort. And he dreaded the dawn.

Because in the morning he had to talk to Wendy.

* * *

They ran the nature trail and on the way back they stopped, as they often did, in the bonfire clearing and sat on the log. "See," he said miserably, "the bad part is that all those things you and Mabel told me, the horrible things I said–I've really felt them! I mean, I've really been mad 'cause your dad's all hung up about you staying late, and sometimes before this I've thought that, well, everybody was plotting against me–not long before Weirdmageddon, I didn't even trust Grunkle Stan when he begged me to! If Mabel had listened to me, Ford would still be trapped in some alien dimension. I don't mean it, but I'm paranoid, maybe even crazy. I'm just the way I am, and I cause terrible things to happen."

"What are you sayin', dude?" Wendy asked.

Dipper sighed. "I don't know. Maybe–maybe we ought to re-think this whole thing. Our plans and all. You know how I feel about you, but—but somebody told me, and he might be right, I don't know–maybe I'm really not good enough for you."

Wendy stared hard at him. "Dude, don't say that! We have, like, a connection! I felt it when that monster inside you tried to drag you to that meteorite and kill you!"

"And you fainted," Dipper said, sighing. "You. Wendy Corduroy. And I caused that."

Looking deeply troubled, Wendy asked quietly, "Yeah, it never happened before, but—wait, Dipper. So . . . straight up, dude, tell me: what are you thinkin'?"

He took a deep breath. "Maybe we should just cool it. You know. Be friends, that's all."

"Can't go back, Dipper," she said, shaking her head. "'S too late for me now."

With mingled hope and worry, he asked, "You think?"

She leaned forward. "Dude, I'll lay it out: You want us to be that way, then I just can't work here any longer, can't see you every day an' not—not be . . . . I'll give Soos my notice. I'll tell Dad I'll go up to Steve's damn lumber camp. 'Cause I can't stand to be around you all the time an' not care for you the way I've come to do."

"You _can't_ quit," Dipper said. "The Shack wouldn't be the Shack without you! Soos couldn't get by without you. But I don't want to hurt you, Wendy. You know that, don't you? I really went crazy back there. All those feelings–they really were inside me, part of me. I hate having them. I try to control them, but I don't know if I can always do it. Ford killed the parasite, but I don't know how to kill those bad feelings. I just don't."

"Dip, it's OK. It's OK, man. You're still growin' up and learnin'. Don't get me wrong, I know you're not perfect, but neither am I. And I know you're not gonna change. You live for chasin' mysteries, man! I respect that. I'll support whatever you wanna do, Dip. And I know you feel the connection we got, don't you?"

"Yeah," Dipper admitted. "I remember when I was coming to, I heard you calling my name just as plain as anything."

She grinned a little. "Yeah, dude, 'cause I suddenly somehow knew you weren't dead! What we already got is special, Big Dipper. Don't ask me to go backward, 'cause I just can't do it. But–if you want–we'll cool it, but just for a while, OK? No kissin' and junk. I won't like it, but I'll hold back. But if it's not workin' after a couple weeks, well, I'm gonna turn in my notice."

"Don't, please," Dipper said softly.

"We'll see."

They went back to the Shack side by side, but didn't speak very much. Dipper brooded for a good part of the morning. And when he had a chance, he asked Soos, "Dude, would you do me a big favor if I needed it?"

"Sure, dawg," Soos said amiably. "Whatcha need?"

"Could you lend me forty dollars?"

Soos laughed. "Any time, man! Gonna get a present for Wendy?"

"Uh, yeah. Something like that," Dipper said, forcing a smile.

 _Yeah, it's for Wendy, though she won't use it. But I need it for Wendy._

 _Forty dollars. With that much I can just afford it._

 _A bus ticket back to Piedmont._

 _Just for me._

 _The End_


End file.
